To change PS1, you just have to change the value of PS1 shell variable. The value can be set in ~/.bashrc or /etc/bashrc file, depending on the distro. PS1 can be changed to any plain text like:

PS1="hello "

Besides the plain text, a number of backslash-escaped special characters are supported:

Format | Action |

|——|——————————| | \\a | an ASCII bell character (07) | | \\d | the date in “Weekday Month Date” format (e.g., “Tue May 26”) | | \\D{format} | the format is passed to strftime(3) and the result is inserted into the prompt string; an empty format results in a locale-specific time representation. The braces are required | | \\e | an ASCII escape character (033) | | \\h | the hostname up to the first ‘.’ | | \\H | the hostname | | \\j | the number of jobs currently managed by the shell | | \\l | the basename of the shell’s terminal device name | | \\n | newline | | \\r | carriage return | | \\s | the name of the shell, the basename of $0 (the portion following the final slash) | | \\t | the current time in 24-hour HH:MM:SS format | | \\T | the current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format | | \\@ | the current time in 12-hour am/pm format | | \\A | the current time in 24-hour HH:MM format | | \\u | the username of the current user | | \\v | the version of bash (e.g., 2.00) | | \\V | the release of bash, version + patch level (e.g., 2.00.0) | | \\w | the current working directory, with $HOME abbreviated with a tilde | | \\W | the basename of the current working directory, with $HOME abbreviated with a tilde | | \\! | the history number of this command | | \\# | the command number of this command | | \\$ | if the effective UID is 0, a #, otherwise a $ | | \\nnn* | the character corresponding to the octal number nnn | | \\\\ | a backslash | | \\[ | begin a sequence of non-printing characters, which could be used to embed a terminal control sequence into the prompt | | \\] | end a sequence of non-printing characters |

So for example, we can set PS1 to:

PS1="\\u@\\h:\\w\\$ "

And it will output:

user@machine:~$