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How To Create Cool Effects in a Terminal

Ubuntu can be configured and managed from the desktop for the most part but occasionally, you may still have to open a terminal session to get some work done. I've spent a fair amount of time working with Debian so I'm used to opening a terminal, switching to root and typing apt-get update. One thing about the default terminal though is that it's boring. Just black text on a white background.

Fortunately, you don't have to live with it if you don't want to. It's easy to customize the terminal's appearance to suit your fancy.

NOTE: The following tutorial will teach you how to customize the terminal, not the terminal session. Once you complete this HOW TO, everytime you open the terminal, the appearance will be as you configured it.

  1. Open a terminal session.
  2. Click Edit in the toolbar.
  3. Click Current Profile to review the settings of the default terminal.
    Click on the various tabs and become familiar with the settings.
  4. Click Close
  5. Click Edit
  6. Click Profiles
  7. Click New
  8. When the New Profile dialog appears, give your new profile a name in the Profile name field.
  9. Click Create
  10. When the new profile is created, click the Colors tab.
  11. Untick the Use colors from system theme checkbox.
  12. Click the Text Color applet.
  13. Drag the circular pointer inside the triangle until the new color is completely white (the left-hand color bar will be black and the right-hand color bar will be white).