Oh My Zsh adds bloat

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Oh My Zsh: Convenience vs Bloat

  • Many use OMZ for one reason: “good enough” shell UX out of the box on any machine (local, remote, containers) with a single install command.
  • Others report they only rely on a tiny subset of features (git aliases, history search, a theme) and realized that doesn’t justify bringing in the whole framework.
  • Some users have since replaced OMZ by hand-written zsh configs, often helped by AI tools that can quickly replicate the needed pieces (completion, history, a few plugins).

Performance and Perceived Latency

  • The article’s ~380ms startup is seen by some as intolerable when opening hundreds of short‑lived terminals per day; the delay disrupts “flow.”
  • Others consider 300–400ms negligible compared to other tooling overheads and see this as over‑optimization, especially if they keep a few long‑lived terminals.
  • Multiple comments report much lower times (tens of ms) with OMZ or minimal zsh, suggesting configuration, git status, node version managers (nvm), and history tools (atuin, fzf) are the real culprits.
  • There’s discussion of proper benchmarking (zsh-bench, zprof) and of async/“instant” prompts that render before full init.

Alternatives in the Zsh Ecosystem

  • Lighter or faster OMZ replacements are frequently mentioned: zimfw, Prezto, zsh4humans, slimzsh, grml’s zsh config, leanZSH, plus plugin managers like zinit, antibody/antidote.
  • Some users clone OMZ and manually source just a few of its libraries to keep familiar behavior without the full framework.

Fish, Nushell and Other Non‑POSIX Shells

  • Fish gets significant praise: excellent defaults (colors, completions, prompt), minimal config, and strong performance; several say it made big zsh/OMZ setups obsolete.
  • Main downside cited is non‑POSIX syntax: you can’t paste arbitrary bash snippets or source bash scripts directly, leading to cognitive overhead for people who also write bash.
  • Others argue POSIX shells are legacy baggage and advocate trying fish, nushell, xonsh, elvish, etc., accepting that script portability may move to languages like Python instead.

Starship and Other Prompt Tools

  • Starship is highlighted as a fast, cross‑shell prompt that can replace heavy zsh themes; many are happy with its speed and simplicity.
  • Critiques: confusing defaults (showing language versions, cloud context), configuration complexity, and missing powerlevel10k niceties like fully hiding empty segments.

Underlying Philosophy

  • The thread splits between people who enjoy deeply tuning their shell (and reusing dotfiles everywhere) and those who want to think about it as little as possible and just get “sane defaults” with one command.