Terminal- bash vs. zsh?

Only you can answer why you did it.

The reason Apple is pushing the switch is because macOS bash is version 3.2.57(1), which is still GPLv2 licensing that is not harmful to Apple's business model (selling proprietary software).

But that is a very old bash version. The current bash version is v5.*, HOWEVER, it is also GPLv3 licensing, which is unfriendly to Apple and other operating system vendors that do not wish to open source their entire operating system and application source code. The GPLv3 license is poison to commercial companies. If they include bash with a GPLv3 license in their distribution, they must open source Everything in the distribution!

This is also why Apple stopped including Samba SMB protocol Windows networking, because it switched to a GPLv3 license. Instead Apple wrote their own SMB protocol Windows networking software.

zsh has a friendly to Apple software license and is mostly compatible with bash, and zsh is not controlled by the Free Software Foundation as founded by Richard Stallman and creator of the GPLv3 license.

If you wish to use bash, you can do this, and you can personally install a newer version using HomeBrew <https://brew.sh>. If you do decide to switch back to bash, then you should put the following in your .bash_profile

    export BASH_SILENCE_DEPRECATION_WARNING=1

which will keep macOS from complaining that you are using bash, and annoy you with requests to switch to zsh.

carolynfromsan francisco wrote:

I did this. Why did I do this switch to zsh?

You have many Shells available, zsh is the "new" default... what is the issue?

Use zsh as the default shell on your Mac

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208050

You can see a the list of Shells, To see your options copy and paste:

 cat /etc/shells

Unless you have some compelling reason... I would stick with the recommended default.