How to change the gnome-terminal default size (ubuntu)
On widescreen LCDs, gnome-terminal looks so tiny. Aren't you sick of resizing it everytime you do a ls -al ?
Important Note:
For Ubuntu Lucid, using Gnome-terminal, you can easily change the default size by going to the menu: Profile > Preference > Default Size.
How-to (old way, and system-wide):
Please note that this modification will affect the whole system and also other users on the system. There are possibilities that the file is overwritten during an xterm update which will reset the changes you made.
- Open Terminal.
- Type :
gksudo gedit /usr/share/vte/termcap/xterm
- Enter your password (root password) if necessary.
- Find something like that (yours must be different, just look around line 10):
:co#80:it#8:li#24:\
- Change the first and last number, for example to set the default size to 200 columns x 50 lines:
:co#200:it#8:li#50:\
- Save.
- Close every Terminal.
- Open a new Terminal, Enjoy!
Mihail said
March 11 2009 @ 10:11 AM
Very nice. Thanks ^^
nick said
April 24 2009 @ 2:24 AM
Thanks! And wow, no wonder I never found that - xterm stuff is black magic..
vincent said
June 8 2009 @ 6:44 PM
neat, I used to create a shortcut with geometry param. to set my favorite size, but this just seems the right approach to it !
ntwrkguru said
June 18 2009 @ 10:44 AM
Very simple and effective tip! Thanks for posting it!
Gary Flores said
June 25 2009 @ 9:26 AM
This is Excellent, I used the geometry option in the launcher, but Gnome do was obviously not working!!!
Now IT DOES! Thanks.
pol said
August 16 2009 @ 1:00 PM
Sweet. That saved me around 2minutes per day and much more annoyance.
Ryan Edwards said
November 4 2009 @ 11:22 PM
Thanks for the tip. Worked like a charm.
Chris said
November 19 2009 @ 11:10 PM
This is what I was looking for...I looked in gnomes site, and ubuntu. I even hosed my terminal in the process, had to log in as root to fix. This is the only thing that worked, thx.
FG said
November 20 2009 @ 4:18 AM
Thanks 4 the tip
jason bourne said
January 7 2010 @ 7:45 AM
thanks man. worked perfectly
sri said
January 11 2010 @ 1:24 AM
Thank you! Works perfectly in Ubuntu 9.10
Darryl said
March 28 2010 @ 9:42 PM
Thanks. This works, but it's really annoying that gnome-terminal doesn't have a separate per-user per-profile setting for a default size.
It should also be noted for users that do this, this change is system-wide and could possibly be reverted in future upgrades...
Arnaud Soyez said
March 29 2010 @ 10:37 AM
Thanks Darryl, I will update the post to notify viewers of this.
Mait said
April 1 2010 @ 9:17 PM
Thanks for great tip!
One question : Could I change some file in my ~/ ?, instead of systemwide.
drooop said
April 2 2010 @ 5:31 AM
Check out the profile preferences of the recently released gnome-terminal 2.30. You'll love it.
Arnaud Soyez said
April 2 2010 @ 12:58 PM
@Malt:
I checked and couldn't really find anything relevant. You need to look for Termcap user-settings.
@drooop
Thanks for tip, I looked at the release notes but could not find anything, I'll probably have to look more in depth.