Some time ago I wrote a post on my blog on how to setup the looks of your Cygwin bash shell using rxvt. Well, I normally add a few more settings to my environment just to make it more useful.

For instance, I add the following lines to my ~/.bash_profile with some aliases to make it easier with directory surfing.

alias ls='ls --color=auto' alias ll='ls -lsa' alias l='ls -la'

It is also useful to set some preferences for vi, and this is done in the ~/.vimrc file:

set textwidth=70 background=dark set is hls ic scs aw ruler ls=2 syntax on

I also like to create symbolic links at my home dir to allow me to have quick access to some of the original and most used folders in Windows, like:

ln -s /cygdrive/c/Documents\ and\ Settings/dambrosio/Desktop/ windesk ln -s /cygdrive/c/Documents\ and\ Settings/dambrosio/Meus\ documentos/ mydocs

Some other useful symbolic links might be the ones pointing to your drives, because it is faster to type "cd ~/c" than "cd /cygdrive/c", which you could create using:

ln -s /cygdrive/c c

Quick and clean! ;)