Nothing more annoying than telnetting into linux from another non-linux machine as vt100, and run 'll' (alias 'ls -alF --color'), only to get colors that don't jive with the telnet client. Remembering to 'export TERM=linux' is a pain but does not really work anyways. I have had to change my .basrhc file to add if [ x`tty | grep -i tty` = x ]; then TTY_COLOR=''; else TTY_COLOR='--color'; fi export TTY_COLOR alias ls='ls -F $TTY_COLOR' alias ll='ls -al $TTY_COLOR' Another way is ... function _ls() { if [ x`tty | grep -i tty` = x ]; then ls -F $*; else ls -F --color $*; fi } function _ll() { if [ x`tty | grep -i tty` = x ]; then ls -alF $*; else ls -alF --color $*; fi } alias ls=_ls alias ll=_ll Is there a color vt100 (vt200 ?) that would work with the --color option. And if so, can the colors be defined differently depending on the color of your background screen (white, black, or blue) ? Anyone have some alias that works better than the above ? Thanks... Dan.