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XTerm

Developed and maintained since 1986.

About

XTerm is the standard terminal emulator application for the X Window System (X.org). Each XTerm window runs as a separate process. Some may run on remote machines, using the X protocol to display on a local machine, while others may run and display on the same local machine. X allows applications to update their windows independently, but the local machine's keyboard and mouse are shared, i.e., only delivering input events to the window which currently has focus.

Screenshots

XTerm screenshot: $ colortest-256

XTerm screenshot: $ colortest-16b

Advantages

  • Developed for the X Window System that is time-tested and available across Linux and UNIX systems.
  • Packages available on most Linux and UNIX systems.
  • Independent of the Linux desktop environment, so you can spend your training time to become a more advanced user of this one terminal emulator rather than having to learn yet another terminal emulator if you switch desktop environments.
  • Configured in a simple config file that is portable across systems and desktop environments: Download, upload, and back up your configuration as a single file. Easy-to-read, single-line parameters and values. Easy-to-understand configuration steps for novice terminal users.
  • One of the faster terminal emulators.
  • Hundreds of community color themes, 256 color support for Text UI applications like Midnight Commander and htop, and easy color theme creation and editing.
  • Supports Powerline.
  • Supports Unicode.
  • Provides DEC VT102/VT220 and implements most of the control sequences for VT220.
  • Provides selected features from other higher-level DEC terminals (VTxxx) such as VT320, VT420, and VT520.
  • Provides Tektronix 4014 emulation for programs that cannot use the window system directly.

Naming

The word xterm is the name of a specific application and its command-line command. Its capitalized form is XTerm (which also corresponds to the X resource class name); similarly, uxterm is capitalized as UXTerm. The word XTerm is a combination of X (the X Window System) and Terminal (a terminal emulator), and is pronounced as ˈeksˌtərm. The word xterm might be erroneously misused by some to refer to any terminal emulator out there.