I don't know if this is considered a bug or a feature. In older versions of RedHat using fvwm2, $HOME/.Xdefaults was automatically read by "xrdb". In newer versions of Redhat using Gnome, xrdb is no longer called to read the .Xdefaults file into the X server. The result of this is that each and every X application now reads the .Xdefaults file when the application starts. This would seem to me to be a performance issue. Consider this trace... # Start up an X application, note that the application reads the .Xdefaults file $ strace xterm 2>&1 | grep Xdefaults open("/home/rick/.Xdefaults", O_RDONLY) = 4 open("/home/rick/.Xdefaults-ipcroe.rkkda.com", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) # OK, now manually read the .Xdefaults file into the X server resource database... $ xrdb -merge .Xdefaults # Voila, the application no longer wants to read this file every time it starts up $ strace xterm 2>&1 | grep Xdef open("/home/rick/.Xdefaults-ipcroe.rkkda.com", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) So what is it? Should xrdb be invoked automatically the way it used to be? Or is it considered normal behavior now for every application to have to read .Xdefaults? -Rick
re-assigning to X - not a GNOME issue
Sorry for the delayed action on this one... bug was lost in bugzilla. .Xdefaults is obsolete. It has been replaced with .Xresources for quite some time. Rename your .Xdefaults file to .Xresources For details: man xinit