Shell

A shell is a command-line interpreter that offers a text-based interface to users. It can be used as command-line interface (CLI) on a terminal or terminal emulator, or as a script interpreter running in the background.

Shells available on Gentoo

 * bash, the Bourne Again Shell, is the default shell on Gentoo. It is used by Portage, Gentoo's package manager;
 * zsh is an advanced shell that is the chosen interactive shell for many users;
 * mksh is an actively developed free implementation of the Korn Shell, and well suited for scripting;
 * dash is the Debian Almquist Shell, a small, fast, and posix-compliant shell suited for startup scripts (as replacement);
 * tcsh is an enhanced version of the Berkeley C Shell (csh);
 * fish is the Friendly Interactive SHell.