What do you get if there is no ~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.d/init.el file? Are you using the Emacs GTK GUI or running in a terminal?
As I like my terminal sessions to be gray text on a black (or nearly black) background (the reason is historical from the days before anti-aliased fonts were well supported), I have configured Emacs the same in my ~/.emacs.d/init.al file: (custom-set-faces ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom. ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful. ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance. ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right. '(default ((t (:background "gray3" :foreground "gray92" :slant normal :weight normal :height 120 :width normal :foundry "unknown" :family "Droid Sans Mono Slashed")))) '(cursor ((t (:background "orange")))) '(font-lock-warning-face ((t (:foreground "orchid"))))) This is a color set you might find a bit jarring but it works for me. The Droid Sans Mono Slashed font is something I found years back and it removes ambiguity of the zero glyph for me. I do have an ~/.Xresources file but nothing in it relating to Emacs, only Xterm and URxvt and my /etc/X11/app-defaults directory shows nothing relating to Emacs. HTH - Nate -- "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true." Web: https://www.n0nb.us Projects: https://github.com/N0NB GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819
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