XTerm and most other modern terminal emulators support 256 colors, you can use a script to check if your terminal supports 256 colors.
To enable colors on XTerm you will need to run the configure
scripts with the --enable-256-color
switch, in addition you may also need to set your TERM
environment variable to xterm-256color
.
For bourne shells (bash, zsh, pdksh) this is done in ~/.profile
:
if [ -e /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-256color ]; then export TERM='xterm-256color' else export TERM='xterm-color' fi
Or for csh shells this is done in ~/.cshrc
:
setenv TERM xterm-256color
See http://frexx.de/xterm-256-notes/ for more information about 256 colors on XTerm
To enable 256 colors in vim, put this your .vimrc before setting the colorscheme:
set t_Co=256
You may also need to add:
set t_AB=^[[48;5;%dm set t_AF=^[[38;5;%dm
Your colors should at least look a little different. For full effect, use a colorscheme that supports 256 colors like desert256, inkpot, 256-grayvim, or gardener.
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/256_colors_in_vim