In openSUSE \> 10.3 you get a colored root (red) promt. To achieve this in SLE/SLED 10 simply drop the following in /etc/bash.bashrc.local (create it if it doesn't exist) : if test "$UID" -eq 0 -a -t && type -p tput > /dev/null 2>&1 ; then _bred="$(tput bold 2> /dev/null; tput setaf 1 2> /dev/null)" _sgr0="$(tput sgr0 2> /dev/null)" PS1="\[$_bred\]$PS1\[$_sgr0\]" unset _bred _sgr0fi See [Bug \#144620][] for further info.