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 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