How To Customize Ubuntu Bash to make it like Mint?

The file ~/.bashrc allows you to make the customizations you would like, among other things.

First open it with gedit ~/.bashrc

Now in order to have the multicolored prompt, find the line that looks like this:

#force_color_prompt=yes

Un-comment it (remove the #).

Now to get the ascii art and quote, you will need to install two packages:

sudo apt-get install cowsay fortune

Now in ~/.bashrc add a line with:

fortune | cowsay

Save the file, and restart your terminal (or resource the file with source ~/.bashrc).

The custom setup is done in /etc/bash.bashrc on Linux Mint 11 - if you download the .iso you can mount that as a loop device on Ubuntu and copy/paste the text, which is quite large, but you should be able to paste it into your ~/.bashrc.

One nice feature is that the prompt changes to red when you are root.

There will also be some setup for the GNOME Terminal application to make the background be white - you can do that through the Terminal preferences.