Fixing dark blue colors on Windows 10 Ubuntu bash

Since Windows 10 Insider Preview build 14316, Microsoft has included the Ubuntu subsystem, which gives you the fantastic ability to run a bash shell natively in Windows 10.

git, grep, awk on Windows is a bliss. By default (at least in my Dell XPS 13) some terminal colors like the directory and comments in vim are very dark, making them unreadable. The following screenshot illustrates the issue:

Terminal default colors

In order to fix this, we do exactly what we would have done if we were running Ubuntu natively. Edit .bashrc and export a different lighter color.

Here is the snippet that needs to be appended within your .bashrc:

Additionally I opted to change my prompt color and format with this:

PS1=’\e[37;1m\u@\e[35m\W\e[0m\$ ‘

For vim you also might want to type the following command in your terminal (unless you use a custom vim color profile):

echo “set background=dark” >> .vimrc

Here is the final result after the above changes

Bonus: Disable the annoying bell sound when hitting the backspace

echo “set bell-style none” >> .inputrc