Rxvt

rxvt is a great terminal emulator for Windows. I much prefer it over Putty, and especially the default cygwin command prompt. It's an optional cygwin package, and I highly recommend using it.

Here's some settings I use to tweek my default rxvt terminal.

My ~/.Xdefaults file:

rxvt*title:             Bash
rxvt*background:        darkslategray
rxvt*foreground:        wheat
rxvt*scrollBar_right:   true
rxvt*colorBD:           1
rxvt*font:              courier
rxvt*saveLines:         10000
rxvt.backspacekey:      ^?

XTerm*saveLines:        5000
XTerm*scrollBar:        true
XTerm*rightScrollBar:   true

My cygwin shortcut:

C:\cygwin\bin\rxvt.exe -sl 2000 -fn courier -sr -e bash.exe --login -i

Another useful rxvt trick I learned is using the shift-keypad-plus and shift-keypad-minus to change the font sizes of an open window. You can open a new window with a big font like this:

rxvt -fn 'Lucida Console-24''

vim

Be sure to add set t_Co=256 to ~/.vimrc below 'set nocompatible' <geshi> set nocompatible " We're running Vim, not Vi! set t_Co=256 </geshi>