By default the terminal app in OSX is not configured the way you are used to on a Linux system. There is no color output for ls and things like page up and page down are not working via SSH. Fortunately this can be corrected with some small configuration tweaks.

The first thing is to open the prefenreces panel and set the “Pro” theme as the standard theme. I also like to activate text antialiasing. My font of choice is “Monaco 12pt.”.

To enable the page down, page up, home and end keys you need to go to the keyboard tab and set the following key actions:

Home = \033[1~

End = \033[4~

Page Up = \033[5~

Page Down = \033[6~

To activate colored output for ls with a decent color scheme that works well on a dark background, create a file .profile in your home directory with the following contents:

export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=cxexcxdxbxfxfxbxbxcxcx