Changing the font and background of a terminal

In almost all the linux distributions the default terminal that opens is with black text and white back ground or when you log into the text mode it would be black background with white font.

Not everyone is fond of such simple looks and if you are one of them then here are a few ways you can change that look.

Using GUI:

Go to edit->"Profile preferences" and from the tabs, color and background you can set the color for the text as well as the backgroud.

This is possible only when you are using the terminal in the GUI, but not when you log in using the text mode.

Here are two to modify the color of the font as well as the background, even when in the text mode .

tput:

To change the font run the command

tput setaf <Any number from 0 to 7>

e.g.:

tput setaf 1

This will make the font to appear in red. There are 8 possible colors for the 8 different numbers.

Similarly for changing the background color

tput setab <Any number from 0 to 7>

e.g.:

tput setab 2

This will set the background to green.

To make the font bold:

tput bold

To go back to the default colors run the command

tput reset

setterm:

This command does not work in the GUI but works in the text mode.

To change the color of the font pass the option forground to the command

setterm -foreground <color>

Where the color could be one of the following :

black, red, green, yellow, blue,magenta, cyan, or white

e.g.:

setterm -foreground red

Similarly to change the background of the font pass the option "background" with the color.

setterm -background <color>

e.g.:

setterm -background green

To make the font bold

setterm -bold on

To go back to the default settings

setterm -reset