Setting up VIM with better color scheme while working via dark console.

I spend a lot of time working in the console window as I manage multiple EC2 instances.
At work I use cygwin and at home I use gold old linux terminal. Depending on the configuration, vim color scheme might not be as terminal color friendly.
Look at the image below.

I could hardly read the comments on this shell script. Luckily vim does provides multiple color schemes to work with.
You can try different color scheme by running “:colorscheme” in vim.

:colorscheme delek

Instead of doing it every time, We can manage the default vim setting by creating a “.vimrc” file on the home directory.
Lets do that:

$ vi ~/.vimrc

Add following lines in the file

syntax on
colorscheme delek

I have selected have the syntax highlighting on and selected “delek” color scheme so its easier to read on my terminal.

Now lets look at the same shell script:

And the output is much readable on the dark console.

You can select other color scheme depending on your preference. You can find the installed schemes at

/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors

Some of the default ones you may find are

blue.vim
darkblue.vim
default.vim
delek.vim
desert.vim
elflord.vim
evening.vim
koehler.vim
morning.vim
murphy.vim
pablo.vim
peachpuff.vim
README.txt
ron.vim
shine.vim
slate.vim
torte.vim
zellner.vim

You can download more online http://www.vimninjas.com/2012/08/26/10-vim-color-schemes-you-need-to-own/.