Configuring xterm in Linux

xterm is a terminal which runs in X. In linux when you open xterm, you get a small window with a small - hard to read - font by default. Compared to the ordinary xterm, the gnome-terminal and konsole come loaded with lots of features and are good to view. So why would anybody use an xterm over the other two? The answer lies in its low memory foot print. While konsole takes a whooping 8MB and gnome-terminal over 3MB of memory, you can run xterm under 1MB which makes it blazingly fast even when your computer has only 64MB of RAM. Below I describe ways in which you could configure xterm to make it look good and easier to read with larger fonts.

# File : .Xresources
xterm*font: -*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-18-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
xterm*font1: -*-*-*-*-*-*-2-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
xterm*font2: -misc-fixed-*-r-normal-*-8-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
xterm*font3: -b&h-lucidatypewriter-bold-*-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
xterm*font4: -*-screen-bold-r-normal-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
xterm*font5: -*-lucidatypewriter-medium-*-*-*-18-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
xterm*font6: -*-lucidatypewriter-medium-*-*-*-20-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
xterm*font7: -dec-terminal-bold-r-normal-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*

XTerm*background: white
XTerm*foreground: black
XTerm*pointerColor: red
XTerm*pointerColorBackground: black
XTerm*cursorColor: navy
XTerm*internalBorder: 3
XTerm*loginShell: true
XTerm*scrollBar: false
XTerm*scrollKey: true
XTerm*saveLines: 1000
XTerm*multiClickTime: 250