Unix and Linux: Visual Quickstart Guide, Fifth Edition

8. Configuring Your Unix or Linux Environment

In This Chapter

Understanding Your Unix or Linux Environment

Discovering Your Current Environment

Adding or Changing Variables

Looking at Your zsh Configuration Files

Adding to Your zsh Path

Changing Your zsh Prompt

Looking at Your bash Configuration Files

Adding to Your bash Path

Changing Your bash Prompt

Setting Aliases with alias

Back in Chapter 3, we introduced you to 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, because they are two of the most common (popular) and useful shells. By configuring your environment, you can make the system adapt to your needs, rather than ...