Terminal doesn't have color and some commands stopped working

Question

Recently, my terminal stopped showing color, so all text is white, and also some commands like l don't work anymore.
I've tried commands like sudo apt-get reinstall gnome-terminal, but then I realised Guake had the same effect. Can anyone explain this?

Answer 1

I've found an answer, thanks @steeldriver!
The fix was posted on How do I restore .bashrc to its default? and the answer is to just copy /etc/skel/.bashrc to ~

Answer 2

I assume you are using the standard bash shell. Use this to confirm.

echo "$SHELL" 

Next, check that you have a bash profile:

ls ~/.bashrc 

If this does not return anything, then you have nuked your profile. So lets get you a clean profile. This will give you a standard bash profile, but if you managed to remove .bashrc, you would need to check what else you have inadvertently destroyed

cp /etc/skel/.bashrc ~

Then do the spell below to get the bash profile activated :

. ~/.bashrc  

This file has a section between lines 38 and 89 that sets up the terminal colours. You can investigate this, but a detailed explanation is beyond a simple answer. Most people (most Unix experts!) leave this alone.