.Xdefaults or .Xresources?

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Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.setup
> After a standard install of TurboLinux 6.0 I notice that I have a
> ~/.Xdefaults file in my home directory, but no ~/.Xresources
> file. On the other hand, my ~/.xinitrc script loads the
> ~/.Xresources file but not the ~/.Xdefaults file, so the settings
> in ~/.Xdefaults never get loaded. This does not seem right -- or
> am I missing something? Are .Xdefaults and .Xresources
> interchangeable, or are they for different purposes?

I think .Xdefaults is used by xdm and .Xresources is used by startx. I tend to symbolic link one to the other and not worry about it.

Prasanth Kumar

.Xdefaults or .Xresources?

From what I read just today .Xdefaults is pretty much the same as .Xresources but now obsolete.

I don't have/use an .Xresource file and .Xdefaults is used even though there's no reference to it in .xinitrc. As the other reply mentioned you could just symlink them. I also do the same for .xsession/.xinitrc (I don't use xdm anyway).

Marc D. Williams

.Xdefaults or .Xresources?

As I missunderstand it, .Xresources are merged one time if you have it your startup script.

Every time an xterm starts it merges .Xdefaults.

I have the least commands in .Xdefaults to make the xterm launch fast as possible.

On some Sun systems, I had to name .Xdefaults as .Xdefaults-node_name_here This did allow me to have the same NIS home directory, with different default colors for different nodes.

BitTwister