The prompt is set by the environmental variable called PS1. To display the current setting, I can use: echo $PS1 The system-wide setting of the prompt (for all users on the system) is in the file /etc/bashrc which on my system contains such a line: PS1="[\u@\h \W]\$ " To customize the prompt, I can edit the file /etc/bashrc (as root) and insert almost any text inside the quotation marks. Here is the meaning of some special codes I may also choose to use: \u - username of the current user (= $LOGNAME), \h - the name of the computer running the shell (hostname), \H - entire hostname, \W - the base of the name of the current working directory, \w - the full name of the current working directory, \$ - display "$" for normal users and "#" for the root, \! - history number of the current command, \# - number of the current command (as executed in the current shell), \d - current date, \t - current time (24-hr), \T - current time (12-hr) - bash 2.0 only, \@ - current time (AM/PM format) - bash 2.0 only, \s - name of the shell, \a - sound alarm (beep), \j - number of jobs the user has, \n - new line, \\ - backslash, \[ - begin a sequence of non-printable characters, \] - end a sequence of non-printable characters, \nnn - the ASCII character corresponding to the octal number nnn. $(date) - output from the date command (or any other command for that matter), Here is an example on how to add colour. See the next chapter for details about colour: PS1="\[\033[1;32m\][\u@\h \W]\$\[\033[0m\] "