SSH and Putty color schemes

I’ve been using Putty for SSH for over a year now. I really haven’t changed the default settings since using it. After having to live in SSH the last couple of weeks, I got seriously tired of the black background and dark blue colors. SO annoying. I tried to do a lot of research on how to change it via SSH and profiles and .dircolors. It just wasn’t working. I could get it to work temporarily when I sourced a file once but it never stuck. Tried it through Putty as well, but again, it never worked or the color scheme was replaced when I logged out and logged in. I was finally able to figure out what buttons to push and in what order thanks to one ServerFault thread that kind of shed light on it. Here’s how:

  1. Open up the Putty Config window.
  2. If you have previous saved sessions, load them.
  3. In the navigation to the left, locate the “Colours” area under “Window” and click on it.
  4. Change all your colors you want. I just used the “Use System Colours” option and called it good.
  5. Go back to the Sessions window and hit “Save”. REMEMBER THIS STEP.
  6. Go ahead and log in if you need to.

Using the System colours means a white background and no blue from what I’ve seen. I just couldn’t handle the black/blue. It hurt the eyes!!