There will be a way, but it'll be under the regular Emacs config, rather than XEmacs (which is only really a graphical front). Emacs does tabs as four spaces in all it's incarnations - I've used it under Linux 1.1 through 2.4, AIX and HPUX. If you're using a reasonable resolution you could always increase the number of columns so it's not such a big problem.
Sorry I can't be of more help, maybe the best place to ask is on a Linux board :-?