If you frequently use a shell (bash in my case), it's important to have a decent prompt statement. Modifying PS1 isn't new to a lot of folks, but I thought I'd share mine anyway:
export PS1="[ \[\e[33m\]\u@\h -- \w\[\e[0m\] ]\n? "
Note that this uses color (a yellow-gold, varying slightly from one machine to another) and only looks good with a white-on-black color scheme. The resulting layout is something like this:
[ peter@komodo -- ~/git ]
?
The reason I like using two lines is that my eyes naturally look to the beginning of a line when I start typing. I don't have to scan through the line to find where I am. This is particularly nice if you're deep in a filesystem and your pwd is 60 or 70-some characters long. Along with that, your command isn't wrapped immediately after you start typing ...