6 ms·

256 colors on the Linux terminal

35 points by kmt 18y ago

kmt 18y ago
This is about xterm-256color. It's very much worth it, if you care about colors in your terminal. You will discover more and more subtle differences. Quite an upgrade if you use emacs -nw.
tlrobinson 18y ago
Unfortunately AFAIK it seems OS X's Terminal.app doesn't support 256 colors.
- albertni 18y ago
  Yeah, this was an unpleasant surprise for me when I started using a Macbook for some coding. My 256 color vim color scheme (desert256, highly recommended!) would just blink repeatedly until I typed in t_Co=8 ... never thought moving from a Linux machine to a Mac would mean decreasing your colors!
- Zev 18y ago
  Have you tried using an X11.app terminal instead of Terminal.app terminal? That may have different/better results.
nikron 18y ago
This would be nice, but most terminals only support 8 colors from what I've seen, and 8 colors should be enough for anyone!
- kmt 18y ago
  Most? I tried non-Linux OSs to see what you're talking about. PuTTY on Windows works perfectly. Yes, Terminal on MacOS X doesn't support 256 colors, but iTerm does.
- illicium 18y ago
  Try rxvt-unicode, it's a great, light terminal app for *nixes and can be compiled with 256 color support. (see the PKGBUILD: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=13060 http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=13060)
iigs 18y ago
People who liked this also liked: http://www.frexx.de/xterm-256-notes/ http://www.frexx.de/xterm-256-notes/ and: http://www.frexx.de/xterm-256-notes/data/256colors2.pl http://www.frexx.de/xterm-256-notes/data/256colors2.pl which is a perl script to show you what your terminal can do. PuTTY answers 8 to tput colors (CentOS 4.7) but is capable of 256.
SwellJoe 18y ago
I started using 256 color terminal a couple of years ago...there are a handful of really nice vim color schemes that take advantage of it. I'm a sucker for nice syntax highlighting, and this change made me happy for days. I found myself wanting to write more code so I could see it in the all it's colorful glory. That feeling has passed, however, so maybe I need to find another color scheme to try.
- jamongkad 18y ago
  What color scheme did you use? I find myself loving the dark vim themes.
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    I think I've settled on desert at the moment. It's dark background, with very mellow highlight colors. Angry fruit salad it is not.
    - jamongkad 18y ago
      desert eh? I settled down with ir_black. It's pretty light on the eyes. I love it.
whacked_new 18y ago
This is the first time I learned that "brightblack" exists... Now I won't be surprised if I see darkwhite and reddishgreen.
wernerv0nbraun 18y ago
xterm-256 is inferior to rxvt-unicode. it supports the color gradients, plus unicode.
presto10 18y ago
Mac OS X's Terminal.app does not support 256 colors. Submit a feature request to Apple if you would wish it did -- I do. Apple Bug Reporter: http://developer.apple.com/BugReporter/ http://developer.apple.com/BugReporter/
- furyg3 18y ago
  First off, why are you using Terminal.app? :) I use iTerm mostly because a) tabs! b) I'm a sysadmin and have a ton of bookmarks for ssh connections to various servers (frequent ones with keystroke shortcuts). c) profiles are handy. iTerm seems to support 256 colors. Edit: Terminal.app seems to support tabs, must be new in Leopard :)

35 points by kmt 18y ago

kmt 18y ago

This is about xterm-256color. It's very much worth it, if you care about colors in your terminal. You will discover more and more subtle differences. Quite an upgrade if you use emacs -nw.

tlrobinson 18y ago

Unfortunately AFAIK it seems OS X's Terminal.app doesn't support 256 colors.

albertni 18y ago
Yeah, this was an unpleasant surprise for me when I started using a Macbook for some coding. My 256 color vim color scheme (desert256, highly recommended!) would just blink repeatedly until I typed in t_Co=8 ... never thought moving from a Linux machine to a Mac would mean decreasing your colors!
Zev 18y ago
Have you tried using an X11.app terminal instead of Terminal.app terminal? That may have different/better results.

nikron 18y ago

This would be nice, but most terminals only support 8 colors from what I've seen, and 8 colors should be enough for anyone!

kmt 18y ago
Most? I tried non-Linux OSs to see what you're talking about. PuTTY on Windows works perfectly. Yes, Terminal on MacOS X doesn't support 256 colors, but iTerm does.
illicium 18y ago
Try rxvt-unicode, it's a great, light terminal app for *nixes and can be compiled with 256 color support. (see the PKGBUILD: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=13060 http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=13060)

iigs 18y ago

People who liked this also liked: http://www.frexx.de/xterm-256-notes/ http://www.frexx.de/xterm-256-notes/ and: http://www.frexx.de/xterm-256-notes/data/256colors2.pl http://www.frexx.de/xterm-256-notes/data/256colors2.pl which is a perl script to show you what your terminal can do. PuTTY answers 8 to tput colors (CentOS 4.7) but is capable of 256.

SwellJoe 18y ago

I started using 256 color terminal a couple of years ago...there are a handful of really nice vim color schemes that take advantage of it. I'm a sucker for nice syntax highlighting, and this change made me happy for days. I found myself wanting to write more code so I could see it in the all it's colorful glory. That feeling has passed, however, so maybe I need to find another color scheme to try.

jamongkad 18y ago
What color scheme did you use? I find myself loving the dark vim themes.
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  I think I've settled on desert at the moment. It's dark background, with very mellow highlight colors. Angry fruit salad it is not.
  - jamongkad 18y ago
    desert eh? I settled down with ir_black. It's pretty light on the eyes. I love it.

whacked_new 18y ago

This is the first time I learned that "brightblack" exists... Now I won't be surprised if I see darkwhite and reddishgreen.

wernerv0nbraun 18y ago

xterm-256 is inferior to rxvt-unicode. it supports the color gradients, plus unicode.

presto10 18y ago

Mac OS X's Terminal.app does not support 256 colors. Submit a feature request to Apple if you would wish it did -- I do. Apple Bug Reporter: http://developer.apple.com/BugReporter/ http://developer.apple.com/BugReporter/

furyg3 18y ago
First off, why are you using Terminal.app? :) I use iTerm mostly because a) tabs! b) I'm a sysadmin and have a ton of bookmarks for ssh connections to various servers (frequent ones with keystroke shortcuts). c) profiles are handy. iTerm seems to support 256 colors. Edit: Terminal.app seems to support tabs, must be new in Leopard :)