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Everybody using the Macs command line interface frequently can customize it with some very simple steps.

Customize Prompt

To customize the default bash prompt you have to edit the environment variable “PS1″. The standard prompt of Mac OS X looks like the following:

hermes:~ eddie$

You can use multiple further options on this prompt e.g. to show the time, command number, coloring parts of the prompt. If you want to create a prompt like

15:43:38 eddie@hermes: ~ (1) $

you have to insert the following line into ~/.bash_profile:

export PS1="\[\e[0;36m\]\t \[\e[0;32m\]\u@\h:
 \[\e[0m\]\w (\#) $ "

(Insert the above command in one line!)

You can get further infromation from the bash man page. A detailed tutorial to customize the prompt is also available. You can find an overview about the different color codes at the Bash Prompt How-To. Also you should read the complete How-To to tame bash.

colored output for “ls”

To color specific files (symbolic links, directories) you can call “ls” with the option “-G”:

hermes:~ eddie$ ls -G

You can define this command as an alias inserting the following into ~/.bash_profile to activate the colored output by default:

alias ls="ls -G"

Alternatively you can set the environment variable “CLICOLOR”:

export CLICOLOR="yes"

In the discussion about governmental surveilance, telecommunications data retention, and fighting terrorism in Germany everybody, not only citizens of Germany, should be aware of that also your email communication is affected. Not only the connection data (who correspondet with whom when) is concerned, but also, based on the so called TKÜV all providers with more than 1000 customers/accounts have to implement a special interface for government agencies to divert the contents of email communication and save it there. Even if you, like German Minister of the Interior Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble, can say that you are “decent” (german: anständig), for sure nobody is pleasured knowing that potentially every single email could be saved and analyzed by strangers without his knowledge.
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If you want to install TeX on your Mac there are multiple options how to do it. Let’s see what’s out there:
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At the moment there are very few viruses, trojaners or other malware out there which chose Mac OS X as their host operating system. But it’s still not a bad idea to install a virus scanner on OS X. A popular scanner on Linux/UNIX, and therefore OS X, is Clamav, a open source scanner. ClamXav provides a simple GUI to control the scanner. Included in the installation image is not only the GUI but also the complete clamav scanner engine so that no further software installation is necessary.
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