First thing I usually do on a new Linux system is dial down colors in “ls”. Default colors are ridicuously distacting and most don’t convey any new information. I like directories and symlinks highlighted. But the fact that a file is a .jpg or .tar.gz is sufficiently obvious from its name, without turning my terminal into a circus.

I similarly dislike the new trend of fancy command prompts. It’s a prompt, it should stay in the background.