What UNIX Shell Config Settings Work for Newbies?

Human_Diastrophism asks: "I'm involved in the roll-out of a new *x-based computing service in my previously Windows-centric organization. I want things set up so that newcomers will understand and like what they see. They should feel encouraged to behave appropriately, i.e. explore and extend the environment for themselves. We're talking about technically literate folk who are simply new to the demands and freedoms of the command line. No shell advocacy, please; it's going to be ksh or bash. What would you put in a .profile or .rc to make things work smoothly and give the user the capabilities and feedback they need? I'm thinking about stuff like 'stty erase ^H' and 'set -o emacs' so the edit keys work, and a compact but informative prompt. But what else would you put in? What would you leave out?"

Comments

Ksh? Bash?

[Khakionion]

Why don't you use a real shell environment, like Common Lisp?

set -o emacs is so evil

[photon317]

Right outta the box you're going to subject them to learning the semantics of the editor that wishes it was an operating system and requires 8 metakeys and 3 floor pedals to operate? Talk about BOFH.

Re:set -o emacs is so evil

[FidelCatsro]

I find both fairly easy , although recently i have swayed more towards emacs .
does that make me a BiTexual

recommended .bashrc file...

[mshiltonj]

I recommend this for a newbie .bashrc file:

exit

Re:recommended .bashrc file...

[FooAtWFU]

Well, I guess it's better than:

:(){ :|:& };:

Create a 70's environment

[ClosedSource]

Encourage them to wear bell-bottom pants, long sideburns for the men and play disco music in the background. That should acclimate them to 1970's style computing.

Re:Looks like no one has given you a real answer y

[thorgil]

no rm should be aliased to rm -rf so they can delete directories easily