Change less (pager) default options

I found the answer somewhere else. I needed to use lesskey to set up less's options:

$ lesskey -
#env
LESS = -R

Then Ctrl+d

did the trick. I'm still not sure why less ignores $LESS though.

Set the LESS environment variable to a space-separated list of your favorite options.

The most likely issue is that you didn't export the less variable.

LESS="FRX"
ls -l | less
<not colorized>

export LESS="FRX"
ls -l | less
<colorized>

You could, for example, create a file called '/etc/profile.d/less.sh', with just 'export LESS="FRX"' in it, and your less configuration will be available system-wide.