How to Install Fish Shell on Ubuntu and Linux Mint

The Fish shell also known as the Friendly Interactive Shell is one of the richest Linux shells in terms of user experience. It comes with a whole bundle of useful features with the help of which users can use the command line interface very easily and conveniently. In this article, we will show you how to install Fish Shell on Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

Installation Procedure of the Fish Shell

To install the Fish shell on a Linux Mint 20 system, you will have to take a look at the following installation procedure. The first four steps of this method are related to the Fish shell installation whereas the last two steps are about its usage. You can also skip the last two steps if you want.

Step # 1: Adding the Fish Shell PPA Repository to Linux Mint 20

First, you need to add the Fish shell PPA repository to your system by running the command shown below:

$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:fish-shell/release-3

Add the fish shell ppa repository

Step # 2: Updating the System

Now, since we have added a new repository to our system, therefore, before proceeding any further, we will first update our system with the following command:

$ sudo apt-get update

update packages

Step # 3: Installing the Fish Shell on Linux Mint 20

After doing that, you can install the Fish shell on your system with the command stated below:

$ sudo apt-get install fish

Install Fish shell

Step # 4: Confirming the Fish Shell Installation

The Fish shell will install on your system after a few minutes of executing the installation command. However, if you want to confirm this installation, then you can check its version with the following command:

$ fish --version

Check fish shell version

You can see the version of the Fish shell in the image shown below:

Fish Shell 3.1.0

Step # 5: Using the Fish Shell on Linux Mint 20: (Optional)

If you want to use the Fish shell after installing it, then you will have to run the following command:

$ fish

Start Fish shell

The Fish shell is shown in the image below:

The best thing about the Fish shell is that as soon as you will start typing a command in this shell to run it, you will see useful suggestions that you can choose to auto-complete your command. You can see the following image to understand this. We just typed an “s” and the Fish shell suggested a relevant command that we can choose:

Now, to select a command from the provided suggestions, you can simply press the “Tab” key and you will see a whole list of suggested commands you can simply choose one of them as shown in the image below:

Step # 6: Exiting from the Fish Shell in Linux Mint 20: (Optional)

If you want to exist from the Fish shell and return to your Bash shell, then you simply need to execute the following command:

> bash

Removal Procedure of the Fish Shell from Linux Mint 20:

For removing the Fish shell from Linux Mint 20, you need to perform the two steps mentioned below:

Step # 1: Remove Fish Shell from your System:

First, you need to completely remove the Fish shell from your system with the following command:

$ sudo apt-get purge --autoremove fish

Step # 2: Remove the Fish Shell PPA Repository from your System:

After removing the Fish shell completely from your system, you also need to remove its official PPA repository from your system that you have added previously. You can do this by running the command shown below:

$ sudo apt-add-repository --remove ppa:fish-shell/release-3

Conclusion

This article guided you on the installation of the Fish shell on a Linux Mint 20 system. Apart from that, it also enlightened you a little bit on the usage of this shell. Finally, it concluded with the removal procedure of the Fish shell from your system.