Definitely not for everyone, but: set +H export HISTIGNORE="&" alias reset="printf '\033\143'" alias ls="ls --color=never -p -D '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M'" ali

Definitely not for everyone, but: set +H export HISTIGNORE="&" alias reset="printf '\033\143'" alias ls="ls --color=never -p -D '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M'" alias pmake="gmake -j30" PS1="\[\e[0;32m\][\w]$\[\e[m\] " history -w history -c I turn off history substitution (sometimes ! get into my program arguments and I don't like surprises), and start with no history on new terminals. I don't trust myself not to run an rm * from a previous session, open another terminal, and hit up one too many times. A little colorization of the terminal prompt, and spicing up of ls output (the colors actually give me trouble, and often I can't read the dark blue items at all.) But most specifically, I adore the reset alias. Unlike clear, it isn't undone when you scroll up. The built-in reset command takes forever to run and does a bunch of things I don't want. HISTIGNORE is my absolute favorite. It doesn't log your last command to history if it's the same as the one already there. I'll often run make multiple times to fix compilation errors, and with HISTIGNORE, the command to run the resulting binary is only ever two up keystrokes away.