which in turn probably depends on the terminal capabilities library in use (usually termcap, terminfo, ncurses, or all of the above).
try setting TERM=xterm-color or xtermc in your environment, (export for sh, setenv for stupid).
vim has a color option that needs to be set, depending on defaults and termcaps. Other apps have color options too, although many will Just Work if your termcaps are correctly setup.
You can alias ls to ls --color (or ls --color --whateverelse) to make it always display that way. |
