What is a shell? What is its purpose? What is a login shell? How can you determine the name of your login shell? Give command(s) that you can use for this purpose. Give names of three LINUX shells. Which are the most popular? Which shell do you normally use? Why?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

When you log on, the LINUX system starts running a program that acts as an inter-face between you and the LINUX kernel. This program, called the LINUX shell, exe-cutes the commands that you have typed in via the keyboard. When a shell starts running, it gives you a prompt and waits for your commands. When you type a command and press , the shell interprets your command and executes it. If you type a nonexistent command, the shell so informs you, redisplays the prompt, and waits for you to type the next command. Because the primary pur-pose of the shell is to interpret your commands, it is also known as the LINUX command interpreter.
The shell that starts running when you logon is known as your login shell. The login shell on our LINUX computer is Bash. You can determine the name of your login shell by executing the echo $SHELL command.
The names of three LINUX shells are: Bourne Again (Bash), TC (tcsh), and Z (zsh). The most popular shells are Bash and TC shells.
I normally use Bash because it has the best features for interactive use as well as for shell scripting.