Eshell
Ranked 9 of 12 shells by recommenders
Emacs' built-in shell, liked for Elisp customization, tab completion tweaks and staying in the editor's directory.
Emacs' built-in shell, liked for Elisp customization, tab completion tweaks and staying in the editor's directory.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 90%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Customizable in Elisp and completions
“since I can do more in elisp-land without relying on the shitshow of Windows CLI utils”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Emacs is my new window manager (2015)” “Eshell hacks better and I can fine tune my tab completions”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Eschewing Zshell for Emacs Shell (2014)” Praised as awesome, a killer feature
“eshell is awesome and Ghostel is not a replacement for it”
Comment from 12 Jul 2026 in “Ghostel.el: Terminal emulator powered by libghostty” “It's a real killer feature.”
Comment from 12 Jul 2026 in “Ghostel.el: Terminal emulator powered by libghostty”
Other shells people recommend
The four most recommended other shells, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bash | 171 | 127 | 57% | 12 | 20 yrs7 owners | — |
| PowerShell | 156 | 92 | 63% | 12 | — | — |
| fish shell | 97 | 20 | 83% | 12 | 5 yrs11 owners | Approved |
| Nushell | 92 | 15 | 86% | 11 | 1.7 yrs5 owners | Approved |
| EshellThis page | 9 | 1 | 90% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“embedding a full terminal emulator in Eshell is the thing that's got me staying on EAT right now”
“eshell is awesome and Ghostel is not a replacement for it”
“Editing scrollback is possible in eshell, and something I use often.”
“It's a real killer feature.”
“That, or eshell and emacs-ipython-notebook”
“Eshell has a module built in for exactly what you want, you just need to”
“i also thought i can't get used to it, but i can!”
“Eshell hacks better and I can fine tune my tab completions”
“I use eshell for one thing only—quick terminal sessions in the same directory as the file I'm editing.”
“too many commands are simply uncomfortable to use in eshell while run smoothly in a real terminal”
“since I can do more in elisp-land without relying on the shitshow of Windows CLI utils”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.