Shell-rc

For .bashrc, .zshrc, .profile, or even Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1).

General

Know if I'm in WSL or native Linux

Simply check the content of /proc/version. WSLs will contain "Microsoft / microsoft" somewhere in the kernel build version (which is very interesting to me lol).

On WSL (running Ubuntu 18.04):

$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 4.19.128-microsoft-standard (oe-user@oe-host) (gcc version 8.2.0 (GCC)) #1 SMP Tue Jun 23 12:58:10 UTC 2020

Also, on WSL with Kali Linux:

$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 4.4.0-22000-Microsoft (Microsoft@Microsoft.com) (gcc version 5.4.0 (GCC) ) #653-Microsoft Wed Apr 27 16:06:00 PST 2022

On native Linux (here Debian 11 bullseye)

$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 5.10.0-13-amd64 (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc-10 (Debian 10.2.1-6) 10.2.1 20210110, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.35.2) #1 SMP Debian 5.10.106-1 (2022-03-17)

List files in a directory after cd

Unix shells:

function cd {
    builtin cd "$@"
    if [ $(ls | wc -l) -le 50 ]; then
        ls -F --color=auto
    else
        echo "There are a total of $(ls -F | wc -l) entries in $(pwd)"
    fi
}

PowerShell:

Function cd_custom {
    set-location @Args
    $numObj = 0
    $regex_opts = ([System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions]::IgnoreCase -bor [System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions]::Compiled)
    $hidden = New-Object System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex('^\.', $regex_opts)

    get-childitem -n | foreach-object { if (!($hidden.IsMatch($_))) { $numObj++ } }
    if ( $numObj -le 30 ) {
        ls
    }
    else {
        Write-Output "There are a total of $numObj entries in $((Get-Location).path)"
    }
}

set-alias -Name cd -Value cd_custom -Option AllScope

.zshrc specific contents

Save history between sessions

Add those lines to ~/.zshrc:

export HISTFILE=~/.zsh_history # follow the convention of bash
export HISTSIZE=10000
export SAVEHIST=10000
setopt appendhistory

Also see this discussion in WSL gh issues, histories might not be saved if the session is not closed gracefully.

General tip is: always use exit or Ctrl+D.

Home and End wrongly captured by zsh

See [1] in Reference.

Run cat then press keys to see the codes your shortcut send and...

Add the key bindings to ~/.zshrc using bindkey. For example:

bindkey  "^[[1~"  beginning-of-line

PowerShell specific contents

bash-like ls

See my gist.

Reference

  1. ubuntu - Fix key settings (Home/End/Insert/Delete) in .zshrc when running Zsh in Terminator Terminal Emulator - Stack Overflow