Just a quick note: I usually use server only Linux installs, but I’ve been trying out deb based desktops lately.

Ubuntu desktop doesn’t seem to honour the .inputrc file in the home directory – I usually use this to allow command line history searching:

"\e[A": history-search-background
"\e[B": history-search-forward

With my server installs, that’ll let you use the up and down arrows to go back and forth through your history as usual, but if you start to type a command it’ll only go through the commands in your history that match what you’ve typed so far.

I find this behaviour to be really intuitive, to the point that it’s frustrating to use terminals without it.

It took some experimenting to find the solution, but in Ubuntu Desktop, the right file to edit is .bashrc and the lines are a little different – explicitly binding the functionality of the keys:

bind '"\e[A": history-search-backward'
bind '"\e[B": history-search-forward'

Ah – such a relief to have this working again in all my terminals!