To change it for the current terminal instance only

Just enter PS1='u:W$ ' and press enter.

To change it "permanently"

In your ~/.bashrc, find the following section:

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then

    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}[033[01;32m]u@h[033[00m]:[033[01;34m]w[033[00m]$ '

else

    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}u@h:w$ '

fi

Remove the @h, and replace the w with an uppercase W, so that it becomes:

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then

    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}[033[01;32m]u[033[00m]:[033[01;34m]W[033[00m]$ '

else

    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}u:W$ '

fi

Save, exit, close terminal and start another to see the result.

Tons more options!

• See here for a more extensive howto, with many more options


• See this answer for using up a tiny Python script to set the prompt so that the shortening only occurs when you are deep in a directory structure.