Unix and Linux: Visual QuickStart Guide, Fourth Edition

Chapter 8. Configuring Your Unix Environment

<feature><title>Chapter Contents</title>

• Understanding your Unix environment

• Discovering your current environment

• Adding or changing variables

• Looking at your zsh configuration files

• Changing your zsh path

• Changing your zsh prompt

• Looking at your bash configuration files

• Changing your bash path

• Changing your bash prompt

• Setting aliases

</feature>

Back in Chapter 3, we introduced you to Unix shells—what they are and what you can do with them. In this chapter, we’ll take you a bit further and look at configuring your environment using the zsh and bash shells. By configuring your environment, you can make the Unix system adapt to your needs, rather than adapting to an existing environment that may not work for you. ...