Ubuntu – Highlighting with grep doesn’t work in Xterm

You haven't hit a wall, but you've hit a |! (So unfortunately, no, you cannot do that without a major re-write of the grep source code.)

However, I like the idea, so if you want, feel free to file a bug at the FSF, or if you don't want to go through the effort, I'll file the bug for you! (just drop a comment)

Fantastic question! I've already added:

alias grey-grep="GREP_COLOR='1;30' grep --color=always"
alias red-grep="GREP_COLOR='1;31' grep --color=always"
alias green-grep="GREP_COLOR='1;32' grep --color=always"
alias yellow-grep="GREP_COLOR='1;33' grep --color=always"
alias blue-grep="GREP_COLOR='1;34' grep --color=always"
alias magenta-grep="GREP_COLOR='1;35' grep --color=always"
alias cyan-grep="GREP_COLOR='1;36' grep --color=always"
alias white-grep="GREP_COLOR='1;37' grep --color=always"

to my bash.bashrc file!

The application settings override the Xresources (or .Xresouces), You should look into /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm to change the fonts permanently. The SimpleMenumenuLabel.font is for the menu itself, the others look like

 *fontMenu*font2*Label:  Tiny
*VT100.font2:           5x7

or

*VT100.utf8Fonts.font2: -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--8-80-75-75-c-50-iso10646-1
*VT100.utf8Fonts.font:  -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1

You can change the values to any font listed in the

xlsfonts

command, but restricting yourself to fixed fonts tends to work better. All the fonts like 5x7 are fixed, five pix wide, seven high, so it's easy to pick a bigger one. The longer names have a size embedded in the name, (first number), with a resolution like 75-75 or 100-100. Try out several at a time on the available font2-6. The new machine might have a different resolution which makes the same setting look smaller than the old one.

5x7 is the smallest standard font of that group, if it's too big, you probably have a resolution problem. Check the resolution of your display (DASH/Settings(gear)/Displays). If it is smaller than before, maybe you need to (re)install any proprietary video drivers.