Let's revisit the ls command thanks to eza

Which CLI command would you say you use most on Linux? Most definitely ls to display the list of files in the current directory.

And then you'll say to me, well, all you have to do is create an alias alias ls="ls -alh"; of course, but let's go further and revisit this basic command and add some functionality to it.

eza is a modern replacement for ls as stated on their website: https://eza.rocks/.

It belongs to the same family of "modern rewrites of the classics" as ripgrep (for grep) and delta (for git diff). While you're customizing your console, Customize your Linux prompt with Powerlevel10k is worth ten minutes too.

Result​

Once ls is aliased to eza with a few flags, this is what a plain ls looks like:

Seeing It in Action with Docker​

Before touching your ~/.bashrc, try the alias in a throwaway container with a small, varied folder already set up — a hidden file, a sub-folder or two, files of different sizes — so the listing actually has something to show off.

Build and run it:

$ docker build -t eza-demo .
[+] Building 14.2s (7/7) FINISHED
✔ exporting to image
$ docker run --rm -it eza-demo
🐳 root ~/demo # ls
Permissions Size User Date Modified Name
drwxr-xr-x     - root 2026-08-22    docs
drwxr-xr-x     - root 2026-08-22    src
.rw-r--r--    0 root 2026-08-22    .env
.rw-r--r--    8 root 2026-08-22    README.md

That's ls — really eza under the hood, thanks to the alias baked into the image. Icons, grouped folders first, human-readable dates: the same result as the screenshot above, without having installed anything on your own machine yet.

Install eza​

The installation is simple, you just need to run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install eza; nothing more.

From now, simply run eza on the command line and you'll get the list of files with all the defaults presets.

On my computer, I've chosen for this list of parameters: --all --long --group --group-directories-first --icons --header --time-style long-iso and, for sure, I've updated my ~/.bashrc file by adding an alias (if you're on ZSH, give that alias its own file rather than growing a monolithic .zshrc):

$ alias ls='eza --all --long --group --group-directories-first --icons --header --time-style long-iso'▋

And, now, by just typing ls, you'll get the listing shown above.