I decided to try and use gcp by default in place of the normal cp command so that I would have a progress bar by default.
On Ubuntu install gcp with:
sudo apt-get install gcp
Now to use gcp by default instead of cp:
mv /bin/cp /bin/cp-default
ln -s /usr/bin/gcp /bin/cp
Note: For a recursive copy use a lowercase ‘r’ rather than an uppercase ‘R’ when using gcp
