Xterm

lastmod 2025-12-04created 2020-07-198 edits

In computing, xterm is the standard terminal emulator for the X Window System.

xterm predates the X Window System. It was originally written as a stand-alone terminal emulator for the VAXstation 100 (VS100) by Mark Vandevoorde, a student of Jim Gettys, in the summer of 1984, when work on X started. Since it was judged more useful as part of X than as a stand-alone program, its target was changed to X.

Many variants of xterm are also available. Many terminal emulators for X started as variants of xterm.

It emulates the VT220 and Tektronix 4010, and also has experimental support for ReGIS.

Categories

• xterm-256color
• xterm-88color

Connect xserver

$ xterm -display 192.168.11.2:0.0

• The host running the X server is specified as 192.168.11.2.
• The leading 0 of 0.0 indicates the display number to show on.
  • When multiple displays (clients) are connected to one server, numbers other than 0 are used.
• The trailing 0 is the number of the root window to display.

See also

• xorg
• xterm.js - Build terminals in the browser
• Ghostty-web - Web terminal that compiles Ghostty to WASM, compatible with the xterm.js API

Favorite site

• Xterm - ArchWiki