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Stop using Screen. Switch to Tmux (http://tmux.sourceforge.net/ http://tmux.sourceforge.net/). Screen is voodoo. Tmux isn't. EDIT: Compare my tmux.conf (http:/

Stop using Screen. Switch to Tmux (http://tmux.sourceforge.net/ http://tmux.sourceforge.net/). Screen is voodoo. Tmux isn't. EDIT: Compare my tmux.conf (http://pastebin.com/m2394d7a2 http://pastebin.com/m2394d7a2) and my screenrc (http://pastebin.com/d7bb649a5 http://pastebin.com/d7bb649a5). It was much easier for me to set up tmux the way I wanted from reading the manpage, than it was to configure screen. My screenrc is a hotchpotch of cut-and-paste from lots of different sources, but I never really understood screen. Maybe that's just me.

jamesbritt 17y ago
I've been using tmux, but it feels less inituitive than screen, and I haven't seen as many howto's and such for tmux as I have for screen. tmux may be better, but it feels harder to get proficient with than screen.
- mdg 17y ago
  I tried tmux after "not getting" screen. I found tmux to just work without me having to do a lot of R-ingTFM. Speaking of RTFM, tmux is now in the base system of OpenBSD so I would not be surprised to see more how-to's online now (not sure when you tried it).
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- silentbicycle 17y ago
  I haven't seen any HOWTOs for tmux (I've thought about writing one), but as usual, the OpenBSD man page is very good, and thorough: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=tmux http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=tmux
davemabe 17y ago
Is screen really that terrible? Enough to switch to something else? Screen is largely standard at this point. Why would I want to switch to this tmux?
silentbicycle 17y ago
Care to clarify "screen is voodoo. tmux isn't."? That's pretty meaningless. The overall design to tmux is quite a bit cleaner, and (having poked around in their respective sources), I know which I'd be more likely to contribute patches to. It took screen forever to get vertical splits (are they still an unofficial patch?), whereas tmux already has dwm/XMonad-style layouts. tmux is also included in the standard OpenBSD install. Make what of that you will.
- indigoviolet 17y ago
  Compare my tmux.conf (http://pastebin.com/m2394d7a2 http://pastebin.com/m2394d7a2) and my screenrc (http://pastebin.com/d7bb649a5 http://pastebin.com/d7bb649a5). Granted, my screenrc is a hotchpotch of cut-and-paste and default stuff from lots of places, but that's actually the point: I could read through the tmux manpage and set up tmux the way I wanted, without cobbling a conf file together from the blog posts and mailing list emails of wiser people.
  - thenduks 17y ago
    Not being familiar with tmux at all I tried to simply drop in your config (changing only the default path) but all I get is syntax errors at every turn (unknown option status-justify at line 4). tmux 0.8 (20090604-0818) Which is in the Ubuntu 9.10 repos. I'll take any suggestions, but I'm happy with screen :)
    - indigoviolet 17y ago
      my tmux is cvs. You can just comment out the options that fail, but I recommend getting a newer release. It builds really painlessly.
      - thenduks 17y ago
        Yea, noticed the newest is 1.1... I'd prefer to find a debian package for it rather than building it though, I often need to rebuild machines and I always regret adding steps like this (I can just stick with screen since it's everywhere for free). I'll see what I can find... Thanks. Edit: 1.1 package: http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/t/tmux/tmux_1.1-1_i386.deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/t/tmux/tmux_1.1-1_... Some commands are still not working (pane-active-border-bg and capture-pane, it seems) but I can take a closer look at those after playing with it for a while and getting comfortable.
tvon 17y ago
I wish someone would write an actual article on tmux and post it here, every time screen comes up I just here statements about the vague superiority of tmux.
- silentbicycle 17y ago
  No promises, but I might get around to it this weekend. I've been meaning to write something for a while. The tmux man page is quite thorough, but there are a few things that might be confusing if you expect it to behave like screen, such as layouts.
- 0wned 17y ago
  It's easy... rather than the Ctrl+A key sequence that you use in screen, use Ctrl+B in tmux. And to reattach, rather than screen -r, tmux attach does the trick. That's 90% of the usability difference.
  - FlemishBeeCycle 17y ago
    People usually point to the BSD license and better code-base as the main selling points. Then they point to vertical split (which you can patch screen to do). Bottom line is, if you have a screen config you like - there's not much point in switching. If you're just getting into terminal multiplexers, it's worth a look.
zzzmarcus 17y ago
Tmux solves a problem for me. Previously I was using a combination of Screen and dvtm (http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm/ http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm/) to get the equivalent of multiple screens, each with their own splits. Screen can do splits but you can't maintain splits in one screen/tab and move to another screen with independent splits. It's hard to describe, but if you've used screen or dvtm you probably know what I mean. Tmux seems to have that built in. Awesome, thanks.
philjackson 17y ago
For emacs users Tmux is far more intuitive, what with the bindings you expect doing what you expect. Binding C-space for begin selection in screen seemed to be impossible.
graywh 17y ago
Tmux uses some non-standard escape sequences, e.g. ctrl- and ctrl-shift- arrow keys. In version 1.0 it's impossible to distinguish between ctrl-left and ctrl-shift-left.
- graywh 17y ago
  Turns out there's a window option "xterm-keys" that makes things better.
Sukotto 17y ago
Screen has a very large chunk of the potential market share for this sort of utility app. Tmux is going to have to be 10 times better to get people to switch. ("Screen" also has a name that's easy to remember, and to spell.) Is tmux 10 times better than screen? Cause that's what it's going to take to get people to switch at this point.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  Not having used either program, I'm more inclined to try tmux just because it seems to give some visual cues about what's happening. Gnu-screen seems oriented entirely towards remembering commands, something that doesn't appeal to me. That said, I think both programs more explanation concerning what they do.
- JoachimSchipper 17y ago
  Not 10 times, no. On the other hand, tmux is improving quickly; if not every day, at least every week. screen, on the other hand, seems pretty stagnant.
  - vidarh 17y ago
    That's because screen does what most people who use it want. I haven't used "new" functionality in newer versions of screen since I first started using it years and years ago.

jamesbritt 17y ago

I've been using tmux, but it feels less inituitive than screen, and I haven't seen as many howto's and such for tmux as I have for screen. tmux may be better, but it feels harder to get proficient with than screen.

mdg 17y ago
I tried tmux after "not getting" screen. I found tmux to just work without me having to do a lot of R-ingTFM. Speaking of RTFM, tmux is now in the base system of OpenBSD so I would not be surprised to see more how-to's online now (not sure when you tried it).
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
silentbicycle 17y ago
I haven't seen any HOWTOs for tmux (I've thought about writing one), but as usual, the OpenBSD man page is very good, and thorough: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=tmux http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=tmux

davemabe 17y ago

Is screen really that terrible? Enough to switch to something else? Screen is largely standard at this point. Why would I want to switch to this tmux?

silentbicycle 17y ago

Care to clarify "screen is voodoo. tmux isn't."? That's pretty meaningless. The overall design to tmux is quite a bit cleaner, and (having poked around in their respective sources), I know which I'd be more likely to contribute patches to. It took screen forever to get vertical splits (are they still an unofficial patch?), whereas tmux already has dwm/XMonad-style layouts. tmux is also included in the standard OpenBSD install. Make what of that you will.

indigoviolet 17y ago
Compare my tmux.conf (http://pastebin.com/m2394d7a2 http://pastebin.com/m2394d7a2) and my screenrc (http://pastebin.com/d7bb649a5 http://pastebin.com/d7bb649a5). Granted, my screenrc is a hotchpotch of cut-and-paste and default stuff from lots of places, but that's actually the point: I could read through the tmux manpage and set up tmux the way I wanted, without cobbling a conf file together from the blog posts and mailing list emails of wiser people.
- thenduks 17y ago
  Not being familiar with tmux at all I tried to simply drop in your config (changing only the default path) but all I get is syntax errors at every turn (unknown option status-justify at line 4). tmux 0.8 (20090604-0818) Which is in the Ubuntu 9.10 repos. I'll take any suggestions, but I'm happy with screen :)
  - indigoviolet 17y ago
    my tmux is cvs. You can just comment out the options that fail, but I recommend getting a newer release. It builds really painlessly.
    - thenduks 17y ago
      Yea, noticed the newest is 1.1... I'd prefer to find a debian package for it rather than building it though, I often need to rebuild machines and I always regret adding steps like this (I can just stick with screen since it's everywhere for free). I'll see what I can find... Thanks. Edit: 1.1 package: http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/t/tmux/tmux_1.1-1_i386.deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/t/tmux/tmux_1.1-1_... Some commands are still not working (pane-active-border-bg and capture-pane, it seems) but I can take a closer look at those after playing with it for a while and getting comfortable.

tvon 17y ago

I wish someone would write an actual article on tmux and post it here, every time screen comes up I just here statements about the vague superiority of tmux.

silentbicycle 17y ago
No promises, but I might get around to it this weekend. I've been meaning to write something for a while. The tmux man page is quite thorough, but there are a few things that might be confusing if you expect it to behave like screen, such as layouts.
0wned 17y ago
It's easy... rather than the Ctrl+A key sequence that you use in screen, use Ctrl+B in tmux. And to reattach, rather than screen -r, tmux attach does the trick. That's 90% of the usability difference.
- FlemishBeeCycle 17y ago
  People usually point to the BSD license and better code-base as the main selling points. Then they point to vertical split (which you can patch screen to do). Bottom line is, if you have a screen config you like - there's not much point in switching. If you're just getting into terminal multiplexers, it's worth a look.

zzzmarcus 17y ago

Tmux solves a problem for me. Previously I was using a combination of Screen and dvtm (http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm/ http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm/) to get the equivalent of multiple screens, each with their own splits. Screen can do splits but you can't maintain splits in one screen/tab and move to another screen with independent splits. It's hard to describe, but if you've used screen or dvtm you probably know what I mean. Tmux seems to have that built in. Awesome, thanks.

philjackson 17y ago

For emacs users Tmux is far more intuitive, what with the bindings you expect doing what you expect. Binding C-space for begin selection in screen seemed to be impossible.

graywh 17y ago

Tmux uses some non-standard escape sequences, e.g. ctrl- and ctrl-shift- arrow keys. In version 1.0 it's impossible to distinguish between ctrl-left and ctrl-shift-left.

graywh 17y ago
Turns out there's a window option "xterm-keys" that makes things better.

Sukotto 17y ago

Screen has a very large chunk of the potential market share for this sort of utility app. Tmux is going to have to be 10 times better to get people to switch. ("Screen" also has a name that's easy to remember, and to spell.) Is tmux 10 times better than screen? Cause that's what it's going to take to get people to switch at this point.

joe_the_user 17y ago
Not having used either program, I'm more inclined to try tmux just because it seems to give some visual cues about what's happening. Gnu-screen seems oriented entirely towards remembering commands, something that doesn't appeal to me. That said, I think both programs more explanation concerning what they do.
JoachimSchipper 17y ago
Not 10 times, no. On the other hand, tmux is improving quickly; if not every day, at least every week. screen, on the other hand, seems pretty stagnant.
- vidarh 17y ago
  That's because screen does what most people who use it want. I haven't used "new" functionality in newer versions of screen since I first started using it years and years ago.