Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 75180
'ls' colors dark at console
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:47:11 EDT
Description of problem: When logged in at the console, 'ls' uses dark colors; for example, dark blue for directories. This is inconsistent with RH 6.x and RH 7.x; they use light colors, such as light blue for directories. Light colors on a black background are much easier to read than dark colors on a black blackground. I'm assuming this was a mistake, i.e. someone wanted to make it use dark colors when a bright-backgrounded terminal was used (e.g. xterm), but in the process inadvertently made the console colors dark too. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: At the console, do: ls --color Actual Results: dark blue, dark green, dark cyan, ... Expected Results: light blue, light green, light cyan, ... Additional info: I found a similar problem with vim in RH 8.0 (#75177); I don't know if it's related or is a coincidence.
This is mentioned in the release notes, and is not a fileutils or vim bug: . On the console, the latarcyrheb-sun16 font is used for best Unicode coverage. Due to the use of this font, bold colors are not available.
Hmm, so this is a known issue, but isn't it still something that should be addressed? Why should a change in the font affect whether bold colors can be used?
I found the answer to my question: It's because the bit that's normally used to set the bold attribute is instead used to select characters 257-512 in a 512- character font.
Just a note: if you want to change the system font, it looks like you just need to change the SYSFONT variable in /etc/sysconfig/i18n. I set mine to "lat0-sun16" (7.3 default). I appreciate the Unicode support, but I do most of my work over SSH and the dark colours made it unusable.
All programs in text mode need colors!! If i use foreground yellow on background brown i can't see nothing!