I don't use gnome, but with the normal X xterm you need the
-ls parameter. From
xterm(1):
Code:
-ls This option indicates that the shell that is
started in the xterm window will be a login shell
(i.e., the first character of argv[0] will be a
dash, indicating to the shell that it should read
the user's .login or .profile).
Only then xterm will read the shell initialization files like .profile and .kshrc.