Colours & Ubuntu defaults

Installing these dotfiles replaces your ~/.bashrc, so useful parts of Ubuntu’s default .bashrc (from Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, /etc/skel/.bashrc) were ported into .bash_profile — and to .zshrc too, so both shells match.

Default	bash	zsh	What it does
History settings, checkwinsize	✅	own equivalents	see bash
ls / grep colour aliases, ll, la, l	✅	✅	see Aliases
lesspipe	✅	✅	less can show archives, PDFs, images
dircolors	✅	✅	colour scheme for ls
bash-completion	✅	— (zsh has its own)	smart Tab completion
Coloured completion lists	— (bash can’t)	✅	Tab menu uses ls colours
alert	✅	✅	desktop notification
debian_chroot prompt prefix	—	—	skipped: only matters inside chroots
Ubuntu’s coloured prompt	—	—	replaced by Starship

Each one only runs if the program exists, so nothing breaks on macOS or minimal servers.

lesspipe

less file.tar.gz normally shows unreadable binary. With lesspipe, it shows the archive’s file list instead; the same for PDFs (as text), images (their details) and more.

eval "$(SHELL=/bin/sh lesspipe)"

lesspipe prints two export lines that tell less to use it. SHELL=/bin/sh makes sure those lines are in plain sh syntax, which both bash and zsh understand.

dircolors

GNU ls --color takes its colours from the LS_COLORS variable. dircolors sets it:

• With ~/.dircolors, that file’s scheme is used. Make one to customise: dircolors -p > ~/.dircolors
• Without it, the built-in scheme is used.

Not available on macOS — there, CLICOLOR=1 turns on colours for BSD ls.

Coloured completion (zsh)

zstyle ':completion:*' list-colors "${(s.:.)LS_COLORS}"

Makes the zsh Tab menu colour folders, links and executables the same way ls does. ${(s.:.)LS_COLORS} splits LS_COLORS at each : into the list format zsh wants.