Change Vim Color Scheme

Let’s take a look of the default vim color scheme first, using /etc/vimrc as example.

We can see that a dim background with a dark color wording can make reading quite difficult sometimes, luckily there are seventeen vim color schemes that we can choose from to make our life easier. Those config files are located at /usr/share/vim/vim74/colors.

There are two location in the system where you can set/change the color scheme you want. To change globally, meaning that the change will apply to all users in the system, /etc/vimrc is the file to modified. For only certain user’s color scheme, for example john, then /home/john/.vimrc is the file you modify. For simplicity, I am just going to go globally.

All you have to do is add colorscheme choiceofcolor or colo choiceofcolor at the bottom of the file. For example, our first choice, blue.

Then vim /etc/vimrc again to see the change of color and wow.. blue seem not like a good choice!

So, that’s it! Now you just have to try another sixteen times, which is exactly what I did… To save your time, I have all the result below so you can just look and pick your favorite one! Use the picked color scheme to try on more files is recommended.

darkblue

default

delek

desert

elflord

evening

koehler

morning

murphy

pablo

peachpuff

ron

shine

slate

torte

zellner

Alright! That’s preview for all the color schemes. I guess I am going to go with koehler for now and if I can’t get used to it, then will change to some other scheme. So what’s your choice?

REFERENCES:
How to set and use a vim color scheme