In Cygwin how do I change the font color?

Question

I want to start using Cygwin, but I am not pleased with the font color and would like to change it to light green with a black background.

(I tried googling to no avail BTW)

Answer 1

It is basically just a DOS window. So click on the icon in the upper left of the shell window to get the menu. Go to properties. You can then change the colors, font, command history, and edit options (you will want to turn on Quick Edit and Insert modes).

Answer 2

I find the standard shell to be pretty horrible myself.

I download and install the rxvt package and change the cygwin.bat to launch rxvt which has nicer support of copy-cut-n-paste.

@echo off c: chdir c:\data\cygwin\bin set EDITOR=vi set VISUAL=vi set CYGWIN=codepage:ansi rxvt -fn '*-courier-*-r-*-16-*' -sl  9999 -bg Black -fg Cyan -e /bin/bash -login 

The -e and -login switch the launch shell to the rxvt one and the rest: -fn sets a courier size 16 font (sue me) -sl scroll lines of 9999 Black background and Cyan foreground selecting text will fill the paste buffer automatically the last bit (-e /bin/bash -login) launches bash and tells it that its a login shell which runs the profile setups and such.