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I've just installed Emacs24 on a fresh Ubuntu 14.04 32-bit system with the default Unity Desktop Environment. I am unable to change Emacs behavior to display it in reverse video mode (dark background). This is one of the first things I usually do (and I suspect many others as well) after fresh install. Things I've tried:

  1. emacs -rv
  2. adding (setq inverse-video t) in my .emacs file
  3. going though emacs menus (Options->Customize Emacs->Display->Reverse Video), this adds (inverse-video t) to custom set variables in .emacs, pretty much same as (2).
  4. adding emacs.reverseVideo: on to the .Xresources and updating with xrdb

None of the above works. When emacs starts up, it seems to briefly flicker to dark background, but nevertheless it comes up with white background.

Does Unity in any way interferes with normal X window and/or emacs behavior? What else might be going on?

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  • Do you have anything else in your initialization file? Try bypassing your config with emacs -Q -rv and see if that works.
    – Chris
    Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 13:06
  • Wow, it did work. Thanks so much. The only other thing I've had in my .emacs file was what I thought was font selection (custom-set-faces '(default ((t (..."DejaVu Sans Mono"))))). Removing that part fixes the problem. emacs -rv works as supposed to. Still working on other options.
    – DeLorean88
    Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 14:55
  • So the goal now is to get reverse video and DejaVu Sans Mono working concurrently?
    – Chris
    Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 15:05
  • @Chris. Nah, the default font is actually OK. .Xresources line works too by the way. Not sure why (setq inverse-video t) still does not work, but Xresources is good enough for me.
    – DeLorean88
    Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 15:15
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