Speaking of cross-platform alternatives to traditional Unix shells, if you like Python try http://xon.sh . More compatible and overall usable as a shell than IPython.
I use this both on my work machine (Windows) and on my Linux box.
On Windows, it's great - if you don't want to learn Powershell. I get bash like behavior and can easily write custom "shell" scripts.
On Linux - not so great. Borderline frustrating to be honest. Some of the issues I have:
If I open something using nano, pressing ^X doesn't work as expected. Similar problems with other terminal software: I think some keybinding in less didn't work as well.
Midnight commander takes a long time to load. Randomly, in Midnight commander I cannot click on things.
Actually, this ability to click and select text in my console randomly goes away with Xonsh. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
A few other quirks I don't remember.
I tried different terminal software and the problems were in all of them.
I haven't yet reported these to the team. I do hope they can fix them. It is otherwise a great shell.
I use this as my daily. Totally love it. The config is just standard Python, and it has extensions. It's pretty neat overall and definitely worth a try.
