Beautifying Xterm via .Xresources

Xterm is the default terminal emulator of the X Window System. And its default state is very, well, default. It is usable but, IMO, it's not very pleasing to the eyes. For a lack of a better word, it looks bland.

Behold Xterm in all its default glory!

Some might say why fuss around with the terminal when clearly there are GUI tools available. I believe that doing some things via the command line are faster.

I will be using .Xresources file to do the configuration of Xterm. It's just a text file located at your home directory so doing a nano ~/.Xresources will create it there. You only then need to edit it with your configuration (of course, you can replace nano with your editor of choice).

Here's my .Xresources file:

! xterm ----------------------------------------------------------------------

xterm*geometry:           80x25
xterm*faceName:           droid sans mono:regular:pixelsize=14
!xterm*font:             -*-dina-medium-r-*-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
xterm*foreground:         white
xterm*background:         RosyBrown1
xterm*dynamicColors:      true
xterm*utf8:               2
xterm*eightBitInput:      true
xterm*saveLines:          512
xterm*scrollTtyKeypress:  true
xterm*scrollTtyOutput:    false
xterm*scrollBar:          true
xterm*rightScrollBar:     true
xterm*jumpScroll:         true
xterm*multiScroll:        true
xterm*toolBar:            false

If you may notice, I used the Droid Sans Mono font and the RosyBrown1 background. Of course you can change these settings to your liking. Note that the .Xresources does not only cater to Xterm but many more X-applications as well. If you are using Arch Linux, like me, then you can start reading this wiki.

Oh, if you are not using a desktop environment (I'm only using a window manager, Openbox), you may need to add the command xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources to your .xinitrc file.

Here's my "beautified" Xterm:

PIIIIIIIINK!!! Xterm

Happy configuring!