January 9, 2026
Shell Shock Showdown
You probably don't need Oh My Zsh
Fans swear by plug‑and‑play comfort, minimalists chase lightning‑fast tabs
TLDR: A developer argues ditching Oh My Zsh boosts tab-open speed with a simple setup and a fast prompt. The comments split: veterans love its “just works” convenience, minimalists chase raw speed, and some say “use fish”—a real choice if seconds per tab matter.
A spicy blog post claims you probably don’t need Oh My Zsh—a popular “make your command line pretty” toolkit for the zsh shell—because it slows down opening new tabs. The author says a default setup takes ~0.38 seconds vs ~0.07 with a lean setup, and calls frequent update checks “why tho.” Cue the comment fireworks.
Team Comfort shows up first: Swizec says OMZ has been his ride-or-die for 15 years and is the first thing he installs on every machine. g947o backs it up: out‑of‑the‑box good, no hours lost tinkering. Meanwhile, minimalist speed freaks brag about stopwatch gains—nickzelei ditched most features and learned more by rolling his own, and anotherpaul had an AI (Google’s Gemini) spit out a custom setup in 15 minutes. “AI is my dotfiles intern” became the day’s meme.
Then the wildcard arrives: metax drops a mic with “Or simply use fish”—a different shell entirely—sending the thread into a side quest debate. Fans of starship (a fast, single‑binary prompt) cheer the author's move away from theme plugins, and fuzzy finders like fzf get love for quick history search.
The mood? Speed vs Comfort. One side wants lightning-fast tabs; the other wants instant setup and zero fuss. And everyone agrees: if you open hundreds of tabs a day, every half-second feels like a lifetime. More drama than a reality show, but with command lines and coffee timers
Key Points
- •Measured Zsh startup with an OMZ setup took 0.38 seconds; update checks can add additional delay.
- •A minimal Zsh configuration using history options, autocd, and compinit provides robust completions without OMZ.
- •Starship is recommended as a fast, single-binary prompt replacing common OMZ plugins; configuration examples are provided.
- •fzf bound to Ctrl+R is suggested for interactive history search instead of zsh-autosuggestions.
- •After adopting the minimal setup and starship, startup time measured dropped to 0.07 seconds; Vim mode is also recommended.