xvt and rxvt don’t support Unicode characters. You have to use urxvt :

aptitude install rxvt-unicode

Not that I find xterm too slow for my use. My “geek curiosity” took over. I don’t like terminal tabs but instead open plenty of different terminal windows. urxvt could certainly do the job.

Then you can customize urxvt using the ~/.Xdefaults file :

vi ~/.Xdefaults
Rxvt*scrollBar: False
Rxvt*background: black
Rxvt*foreground: white
Rxvt*geometry: 110x35

The geometry I use allow me to open 4 terminal windows in my screen.

Note: you can also put parameters in ~/.Xresources but you’ll have to restart X or use the xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources command to load parameters.

I also suggest you the use of a keyboard shortcut to start your terminals. In Gnome :

1. Set your default terminal in System > Preferences > Prefered Applications
2. Then in System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts, set the Start Terminal entry. I use Alt+X.

References :

• LANG=C aptitude search ~dterminal | grep -i "terminal\|emulator" | less
• http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urxvt
• http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html
• http://www.debian-administration.org/article/Customizing_your_xterm