Had some trouble viewing executables (listed in a dark blue) in my PuTTY sessions after calling ye olde "list Alf" (ls -alF) because of the black background, and did some hunting. The first link, below, had one alternative, but it was the comment below that really hit the goldmine.

Site: http://arcanesanctum.net/2012/11/17/a-better-terminal-color-theme-for-putty/
Comment: http://arcanesanctum.net/2012/11/17/a-better-terminal-color-theme-for-putty/#comment-42807

The site linked from the comment was in Russian, but colors know no language (or something linke that). And Google translated what was there, which wasn't too earth-shattering.

Anyhow, those are some nice themes:
http://putty.org.ru/themes/index.html

I ended up going with Desert, at least for now, as it's something completely different. Actually, the background is just a lightened up black (from pitch in the default to a very dark grey) and the standard text is still white (perhaps even brighter than stock), but executables are now bright green, and extremely easy to read. ;^)

http://putty.org.ru/themes/desert.html

Edit 20161107: And just in case that site goes down, here are the values:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions\Desert]
"Colour0"="255,255,255"
"Colour1"="255,215,0"
"Colour2"="51,51,51"
"Colour3"="51,51,51"
"Colour4"="0,255,0"
"Colour5"="255,255,255"
"Colour6"="77,77,77"
"Colour7"="85,85,85"
"Colour8"="255,43,43"
"Colour9"="255,85,85"
"Colour10"="152,251,152"
"Colour11"="85,255,85"
"Colour12"="240,230,140"
"Colour13"="255,255,85"
"Colour14"="205,133,63"
"Colour15"="135,206,255"
"Colour16"="255,222,173"
"Colour17"="255,85,255"
"Colour18"="255,160,160"
"Colour19"="255,215,0"
"Colour20"="245,222,179"
"Colour21"="255,255,255"

You put all of that information into a .reg file, double-click, accept the warning, and you have a Session type in PuTTY for "Desert".

putty desert session listed

So note that you'll have to push over any info you want there. That is, this is a new session with only the colors set. Everything else is blank/new.

Or, if you want to be brave and change an existing session, you change the last value in the first line. That is, from ...Desert to...

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions\Default%20Settings]

Now your defaults are Desert. That's a little more adventurous, but I just tried it, and my Default Settings have that beautiful theme's values now. Thank heavens.

Neat!

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