Coloured Shell Prompts

• The PS1 environment variable manages it. Set it to something in your .bashrc.
• Sometimes simply opening bash twice (bash inside bash) changes it, and also starts colouring the output of ls, grep, etc.
• On some systems, .bashrc isn’t read on login, and you need to open bash inside bash to make it work.

Ubuntu

export PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '

# (scroll to the right end)

Some shells are not coloured by default or something. You might need to add these as well.

alias grep='grep --color'
alias ls='ls --color'
alias la='ls -A --color'
alias ll='ls -l --color'