CachyOS July 2025 Update Finally Lets Users Choose the Shell During Installation

I don't get it.

As such, users now have the option to choose between cachyos-fish-config and cachyos-zsh-config. "If neither is selected, the system will default to Bash. The default configuration will still be Fish ...

You can choose between fish and zsh and if you don't select anything it selects bash but fish is default? Huh?

Meaning, fish is preselected and you have to unselect fish in order to get bash?

Like:

Which shell do you want (deselect for bash)? [x] fish [ ] zsh

From my understanding, if you choose one, you'll get that shell + the styling/prompt, however if you choose neither, you'll just get stock bash with nothing extra applied. I've taken a quick skim through their pkgbuilds, and they don't seem to have a bash equivalent for these configs

I would imagine that if you know enough to legitimately have a favorite shell, you don't really have an issue running chsh

I always figured anyone wanting a different shell is probably heavily into Linux to the point that switching it themselves would be fairly trivial.

Is CachyOS a more CLI focused desktop linux? I'm not very familiar with it. Normally on a desktop I avoid the CLI, because the GUI is just easier and faster to use.

GUI is often faster to learn, but CLI is almost always faster to use. It's the argument people use for why they choose it. You don't have to move your mouse to click on buttons that can be anywhere. You just type. With tab completion, it's significantly faster.
(There is a secondary argument for CLI for tutorials, in that it's going to be the same or similar for everyone.)
- If you don’t count looking up parameters in man pages. GUIs are great because you don’t need to remember or look up commands and parameters. GUIs have keyboard shortcuts as well.
  CLI is great when doing the same complex operation more than once, chaining program output, and such.
- I agree CLI is faster for tasks I do often, but for one-off stuff or rare tasks where I will forget the CLI args, it's significantly slower having to look up the right commands each time.
Sort of, its Arch so all of the fun stuff that goes with that but they also have a package repo application that let's you use a GUI instead. I find the CLI faster but the GUI will guide you to the correct packages a bit better than searching freehand on a browser.

chsh is pretty straightforward. Never caused me an issue. Been using zsh for damn near two decades.

Does CachyOS use real Arch repos or is it like Manjaro which holds packages for "testing"?

no. it is akin to Manjaro in that it is based on Arch repos, but is opinionated. they have their own kernel, wine, proton, with their patches.
- I'm asking whether it's more like "arch with some custom spice" or rather something vaguely similar to arch like "ubuntu is like debian". I tried manjaro long, long time ago and can't remember much more than using AUR being mess due to not really being arch...
They use their own repos, but they don't hold back the packages. The reason for having separate repos is recompiling packages for newer architectures. It gives a little performance boost for most of them. AUR works totally fine.
- OK, thank you, this pretty much explains everything.

It would be cool if it was built into the terminal itself, where you'd just select it and it would auto-download and install.

Alright nerds, what’s your favorite shell and why do you think it was omitted?

My favourite is fish because I tried it once and I really like its autocomplete. I usually do simple stuff so I stick to it.
- Really saves a bunch of time. It seems to auto complete based on what directory you are in too which is really useful for some of the stuff I do.

- If neither is selected, the system will default to Bash. The default configuration will still be Fish, as it was before,” said the devs.
  It absolutely is what the shell is. They probably didn’t read past the first paragraph, but even then, there’s a terminal shell, and there’s a graphical shell too