One thing I got used to when using SLES was that I was able to search bash command history simply by typing the first few letters of a previous command, and then pressing Page Up. However, Ubuntu doesn’t seem to come with that feature enabled by default.
After fiddling with CTRL-R a few times, I checked out how to make this work.
Well, simply add the following two lines on a .inputrc file on your home directory, or uncomment them on /etc/inputrc for a system-wide effect:
"\e[5~": history-search-backward "\e[6~": history-search-forward
That’s it. Enjoy.