I had a similar thought for a long time, but then after watching a coworker I was convinced to give it a try. I multitask a lot with multiple terminal windows,

I had a similar thought for a long time, but then after watching a coworker I was convinced to give it a try. I multitask a lot with multiple terminal windows, and what tmux buys you is similar to a tiling window manager with multiple desktops. I used to spend a lot of time trying to figure out where I put terminal windows, and resizing them to a more ideal size for whatever I was working on at the moment. Tmux allows you to have multiple (named) windows, each with multiple panes, that you can quickly rearrange, 'zoom', add to, separate, etc. I find I get the most bang for my buck by setting the 'escape' key to simply `, instead of ctrl-a or ctrl-b. That way, window switching is simply `3, `1. `z maximizes or restores a window. The problem with colors you mention is almost surely solved by simply launching tmux with '-2' as an argument.