ARCHIVED: In Emacs, under the X Window System, how do I change the default settings for colors, fonts, and geometries?

In the X Window System, you can choose default settings for Emacs in the X resources database (.Xresources). Here are a few examples of lines you can add to your ~/.Xresources files to cause Emacs to start up with alternate colors, fonts, and geometries:

  Emacs*background:             Blue
  Emacs*font:                   7x14
  Emacs*foreground:             Black
  Emacs*geometry:               80x30
  Emacs*pointerColor:           yellow

After making the changes, at the command line enter:

  xrdb ~/.Xresources

You should also have the following lines in your .xinitrc file to ensure that your resources are read upon starting the X server:

  if [ -f $HOME/.Xresources ]; then
      xrdb $HOME/.Xresources;
  fi