LSCOLORS

Have you ever been frustrated with the colored output of ls on a Linux terminal? I switch between Fedora, Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions fairly regularly. I also install new Linux instances several times a year. I often find myself straining at the funky default colors for the ls output. I got tired of dealing with bad colors. After researching other options, I found that too many other color schemes provide every possible combination of either the 8-color or 256-color options. Many of these combinations, especially those with backgrounds, are terrible and should never be used. That just makes it difficult to sift through a huge set of combinations to find the right values. I also found that other color schemes do not give you a good starting point for categorizing files.

Goals

I set out to create a color scheme for LSCOLORS with the following goals:

1. Use colors to differentiate file types as much as possible.
2. Minimize the use of styles with backgrounds or underlines.
3. Use colors that contrast well against each other.
4. Use colors that look good on a black background.
5. Provide a simple list of styles in the file so that the user doesn't have to use a separate reference to know which color is being used.
6. Provide a simple set of categories.
7. Make it easy for the user to customize the categories or styles.

Getting Started

The .dircolors file is the most important file. You can simply download the file and copy it to the appropriate location on your system.

Personal
If you just need to modify your local profile's colors, copy .dircolors to ~/.dircolors.

All Profiles
You can configure the default color scheme for all profiles by modifying /etc/DIR_COLORS.

Configuring Your Environment
You will also need to include some code in your preferred profile script (i.e. ~/.bashrc) to activate the color scheme.

Basic

# If a custom .dircolors file exists, use it. Otherwise, use the default.
test -r ~/.dircolors && eval "$(dircolors -b ~/.dircolors)" || eval "$(dircolors -b)"

Check for dircolors support first

if [ -x /usr/bin/dircolors ]; then
    # If a custom .dircolors file exists, use it. Otherwise, use the default.
    test -r ~/.dircolors && eval "$(dircolors -b ~/.dircolors)" || eval "$(dircolors -b)"
fi

Bash Syntax

DIRCOLORS_EXEC="/usr/bin/dircolors"
CUSTOM_DIRCOLORS="$HOME/.dircolors"

if [[ -x "$DIRCOLORS_EXEC" ]]; then
    if [[ -f "$CUSTOM_DIRCOLORS" ]]; then
        eval "$(dircolors -b "$CUSTOM_DIRCOLORS")"
    else
        eval "$(dircolors -b)"
    fi
fi