When I run >ls in a terminal, I notice that some of the file and directory labels carry a bright green background, while others don't. What is this supposed to signify?
That it is +t IIRC.
I thought it might be a quick visual clue to permissions -- green background = root, or something like that. But when I run an >l on the directory, a handful of user directories and files also carry the green background. This didn't crop up in previous versions of Suse, as I recall, so someone must have seen this as an improvement...
No, the "ls" maintainer went on something, and I do not see it as an improvement. It needs source patching to make it behave sanely (currently you cannot make, for example, a SUID file have the color as determined by extension like before), and is fixed in coreutils-5.93-20.jen1.
Inquiring minds (perhaps with too much free time) want to know...
Jan Engelhardt --