should you know other shells then bash?
 

I'm not really a newbie with linux or the command shell. I even prefer cli vs gui but I do only know the bash shell. If that makes me newbie then alright ;)

I would like to know if I should bother learning the other shells like c shell, tch, and others like that. I do plan on maintaining linux/unix servers in the future. Bash shell is by far the dominant shell by far as anyone knows so I really see a reason at this moment.

There is no harm in learning them. I was only familiar with Bash until I started my current job. I use the korn shell on AIX there. I do not think that it is a bad thing to learn some different shells...just in case... :)

It definitely would not hurt you. I used bash for years, but after trying zsh , I find myself using it more than bash. I also like fish and csh.

I use ksh93 everywhere I can and often install its latest version if missing.

When writing shell scripts, I try to stick to POSIX when reasonable to avoid anything specific to particular shell and other commands implementations.

Agree with others - it never hurts to learn new things.

Bash is the standard shell for every GNU/Linux distro I've used. It's on the / filesystem (/bin/bash - unless you've made some poor partitioning and mounting decisions). If you ever get into a jam and have to enter single-user mode you will have access to it.

Just keep in mind this is not necessarily the case for other unix / unix-like systems. If you intend to work with non-Linux systems, it probably would be a good idea to familiarize yourself somewhat with their default shell(s) in case you ever need to use it in an emergency.

I may be swimming upstream, but...
Why would you learn any computer language unless you had discovered a need for it? Especially with shells, the test I would use is simply whether there was something I could not do with learning a new shell.
Engineers are constantly having to remind each other what problem they are trying to solve.....

That's probably because of the recent growth of Linux users and the fact that most (all?) Linux distributions sport Bash as the default shell. However, you've said "linux/unix". FreeBSD, for example, doesn't use Bash as it's default shell. It's even discouraged to change root's shell to anything other than default (which is tcsh IIRC). So there *would be* situations under certain unices when, if you'd want to do things the right way, you'd be forced to use non-Bash shells.

Hi

A nice shell to use is "fish", if you like eye candy..try it

As the original poster stated, he's planning to support more distributions in the future. In his case, it would be a good idea to learn what he thinks he needs to survive, especially if he's planning to support a currently unknown pool of unix/linux boxes.

Of course, a general linux user, who uses their box as a desktop, and if bash works for them, there's no need to learn a different shell.

So I guess it depends on the general direction you're taking linux.