Here’s the Deal

xterm vs Xfce4 terminal

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When comparing xterm vs Xfce4 terminal, the Slant community recommends Xfce4 terminal for most people. In the question“What are the best terminal emulators for UNIX-like systems?” Xfce4 terminal is ranked 4th while xterm is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Xfce4 terminal is:

Like other applications included in the Xfce package, this terminal emulator is very lightweight and doesn't require many resources to run. This makes it perfect for systems that have low specs.

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best terminal emulators for UNIX-like systems?

What are the best Linux terminal emulators for low-resource machines?

Pros

Pro
Lightweight

Xterm is a very lightweight terminal. It requires few resources, allowing it to run well even on lower-end machines.

Pro
Used in almost every Linux distribution

If you master xterm, you won't have to learn another tty, since it is in almost every Linux distribution.

Pro
Stable, well-tested

Pro
Standard with X Window system

Xterm is installed as standard software with the X Window system, and is there even when installing other terminal emulators.

Pro
Supports sixel images

Pro
Shows full characters for wide fallback fonts

Many terminal emulators that deal with wider fallback fonts (i.e. double-wide characters in CJK fonts) truncate display of wide characters, show Unicode "missing glyph" characters, or simply fail to display the characters at all. XTerm is "smart" enough to simply take up the extra space needed to show such wide characters.

Pro
In about 30 years, it had only one issue, and that was fixed quickly

Pro
It is fast and responsive

See this.

Pro
Many modern terminals emulate xterm

Many terminal applications, such as OS X's Terminal.app and iTerm2 (among others), all claim xterm or xterm- variants as their $TERM and aim for support of xterm's escape sequences. Many command-line applications will assume or even hard-code escape-sequences and behavior for xterm and those terminals emulating it.

Pro
Configurable via Xresources

X Toolkit resources and xrdb predates what is currently called "theme". Although one needs to read man, mitigates most listed cons

Pro
Good for systems with low specs

Like other applications included in the Xfce package, this terminal emulator is very lightweight and doesn't require many resources to run. This makes it perfect for systems that have low specs.

Pro
True transparency

You can set the transparency of the Xfce4 terminal on any amount you want, out of the box.

Pro
Tabs support

Xfce4 fully supports tabs and tab-based navigation.

Pro
Almost everything is customizable

You can configure size, color, background, etc.

Pro
Composition effects

Xfce4 terminal takes advantage of xfce composition effects.

Pro
Fast rendering

Pro
Can be switched to a drop-down terminal

You can configure the Xfce-terminal to act as a dropdown terminal if you want, which makes for greater ease of use.

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Cons

Con
No native transparency

Xterm does not natively support transparency (though it can be emulated if needs be).

Con
Bad defaults

Very small default size. No way to know to how to configure size.

Con
No tabs

Con
It blinks

If it blinks for you too, you can try this: man xterm and then press Shift+G.

Con
Has few dependencies

Has dependencies like xbitmaps.

Con
Historical source code

The stories behind terminal emulation beyond their classical representatives (of which xterm is simply the most long-lived) are somewhere inbetween subtly irritating to downright surreal.

Con
Cannot set text color for character under cursor to background color

Suppose you have a dark background with a light cursor and light foreground color: the light cursor will cover up whatever character it is on, so that you cannot read it. There is no option to set the foreground color for the character under the cursor to what is normally the background color. Such an option would allow you to read the character under the cursor.