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I've been a long-time user of terminator on linux. I started playing around with tilix a couple of months ago, and really liked it. Interestingly though, what

I've been a long-time user of terminator on linux. I started playing around with tilix a couple of months ago, and really liked it. Interestingly though, what I finally realized is there is a huge amount of value in ditching both and switching over to tmux. Tmux does everything that tilix does but is completely independent of the underlying terminal. What I finally realized is that tmux is not just about persistent sessions - the screen/pane management along with completely keyboard-based navigation and history/copy/paste commands just blows the tiling terminals away.

doogle88 9y ago
Exactly. I gave up on tiling window managers after I learnt to use tmux. I was really only using tiling for my terminals anyway. I had to rebind some tmux keys though to make it more i3 like.
placeybordeaux 9y ago
I'm largely in the same boat, but I use nvim instead. I already learned how to manage panes and tabs in vim so once the terminal mode came out I went ahead and gave a try switching.
- zipperhead 9y ago
  I actually went a little bit down the nvim route as well, since it has nice built-in shell support. What I think you're missing with just nvim is the tmux scripting capabilities and of course the session management. It's pretty easy to script up a tailored set of tmux sessions/windows/panes. I do this on initial login. Other solutions like tmuxinator/tmux-resurrect exist to automate this setup, if you don't want to script it.
saysjonathan 9y ago
I came to the same conclusion. I wound up making a small tmux lib for dwm-style pane management: https://github.com/saysjonathan/dwm.tmux https://github.com/saysjonathan/dwm.tmux
jshevek 9y ago
As a fan of tmux and xmonad, I was hopeful that tilix might combine the best of both worlds into one tool. After reading your comment, I get the impression that this is not the case.
zokier 9y ago
Highlights one of the big issues in (Linux) desktop: nested inconsistent ad-hoc window management. Consider that in somewhat typical situation you would have your WM/compositor at top managing windows, then something like tilix managing its own panes/tabs, then tmux/screen also managing windows, and finally maybe vim/emacs which also does its own window management. That is four completely independent layers of window management, each of which does mostly the same basic thing. It is interesting to imagine alternative universe where we instead would have advanced enough OS level window management that would allow deeper integration to underlying applications. E.g. something like OS level tree style tab -like window-management might be neat, especially if combined with powerful tiling management.
- kps 9y ago
  Too bad the Unix philosophy lost out to the Not Unix philosophy.
- saulrh 9y ago
  Counterpoint: different tools and tasks have different requirements for interaction. Each tool provides an interface specialized to its workflow, and the hierarchical nature of the system allows me to split even inside the same tool for different workflows. My primary window-organization tools are: i3 virtual desktops, web-browser, emacs, and tmux. i3 virtual desktops are named by task/workflow: I have one desktop for project management, one for emacs, one for terminals for one project, one for terminals for another project, one for work-related communication, and one for personal communication. Emacs does its thing and makes great use of it, but its spectacular profusion of buffers and its insane customization never pollutes the rest of my WM because it's contained within emacs. The browser desktops group related tabs, but they go one further and let me put tabs side-by-side without multiple windows of project management polluting my global window list. And so on and so forth. Allowing each tool to specialize information management for its particular use case gives me much better performance overall. It's definitely specialized and idiosyncractic; I would not want to make everyone deal with it. But for me, doing this 8+ hours a day: every time I'm forced to work without that hierarchy and that specialization, I can tell you that the effort is worth it.
- imiric 9y ago
thomasjames 9y ago
I've been using Tilix since it's copyright-infringing "Terminix" days as a replacement for Gnome terminal and really like it. While I do most things with it's keyboard shortcuts I sometimes like just mousing between panes and scrolling through history if I'm more reading than actively typing. Per session I use screen for session permanence and it works for me.
bsharitt 9y ago
I'm sort of in the same boat. I've tried Terminator and tiling window managers and finally realized that tmux is what I wanted all along(on tiling window managers it turns out I really only want to tile terminals).
antman 9y ago
I use tmux but not always because i can not preload my systems' env. That seems to be a design decision and thus it cannot replace my terminal.
rogerbinns 9y ago
I wish someone did a terminal emulator that integrates deeply with tmux. eg forward all pane/window management, scrollback etc to tmux while making it appear as native gui features of the terminal emulator itself.
- edoloughlin 9y ago
  https://www.iterm2.com/ https://www.iterm2.com/ Mac only, unfortunately.
  - rogerbinns 9y ago
    I'm not on Mac, unfortunately. I couldn't find anything on the web site showing how the integration happens or works. Presumably it is completely transparent.
    - jamesgeck0 9y ago
      It's transparent, but doesn't seem to map 100%. Last time I used it a lot of stuff in my tmux config didn't work, like keyboard shortcuts.
    - joshstrange 9y ago
      I'm a newbie to tmux but I use it with iTerm and I love it. I use my macbook for work but my dev code/servers are on a linux desktop. When I get into work I ssh to my linux box and type "tmux -CC attach" and my tabs all re-open like normal iTerm tabs and my subdivided terminal windows all restore to right where I left them. It's great for leaving all my watches/running code/tailing logs all open and in panes. It used to take me a couple of minutes to re-setup everything when I got into work but now I just run 1 command and I'm back to where I left off.
- godd2 9y ago
  There is a branch of Terminator which supports tmux integration.
  - 9y ago
ptrincr 9y ago
Thanks for this, just gave tmux a try. Seems fantastic. Tried Version 2.0. Here are the bindings I went for so that it feels more like screen ( what I am used to ), plus being able to use vi like commands for copy + paste: vim ~/.tmux.conf setw -g mode-keys vi unbind [ bind Escape copy-mode unbind p bind p paste-buffer bind-key -t vi-copy 'v' begin-selection bind-key -t vi-copy 'y' copy-selection unbind C-b set -g prefix C-a bind C-a send-prefix Split screen vertically ctrl+a % Split screen horizontally ctrl+a " Copy and paste works like... ctrl+a escape - copy mode v - enter visual mode to highlight y - capture text ctrl+a p - paste into terminal Seems you can use ctrl+a (release) and arrow keys to flip between panes. Plus ctrl+a left/right to adjust pane size.
- zipperhead 9y ago
  Yes, getting the key mappings to your liking is key. There are lots of resources available. One good place to start is the online book The Tao of tmux https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read. Using copy mode to navigate the scroll buffer is also a useful feature - you can really cut down the use of a mouse in the terminal.
vowelless 9y ago
Tmux with modality is something I use alot. https://github.com/mtl/tmux-modality https://github.com/mtl/tmux-modality I need to iron my workflow out a little bit though as all the modes (especially when you have vim within tmux modality ) can be a little confusing.
GrinningFool 9y ago
Wait'll you get into the extensive API it offers for scripting and various other uses.
pkaye 9y ago
how do you get cut and paste working with tmux? it seems to intermingle text among the different panes.
- anonyte 9y ago
  I've tried vi mode copypasting and the copycat plug-in but finally settled for just shift selecting and ctrl+shift+C/V my way through everything. Edit: for vertical panes ctrl+shift selection works on gnome-terminal at least.
- keymone 9y ago
  Yeah, it's a pita. I'm sure there must be a plugin that allows thus to work with OS copy buffer but for now I just zoom on a window when I need it and pipe into pbcopy (macOS) for larger things.
- ronjouch 9y ago
  As other macOS commenter mentioned, total pita, yeah. Under Linux you need this line of command+xsel voodoo: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Tmux#X_clipboard_integration https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Tmux#X_clipboard_integr...
- karlding 9y ago
  A quick and dirty way of doing it, assuming the currently active pane is the one you want to copy text from: 1. Enable pane zoom (<prefix> z) 2. Enter copy mode (<prefix> [) 3. Select and copy text You can also look into the tmux-yank [0] plugin, which copies to the native system clipboard. [0] https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-yank https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-yank
foobarian 9y ago
I've been using screen forever but recently I came across the 'eternal bash history' setup and now I don't dread rebooting or restarting the screen daemon any more. I have my shell history dating back 2 years pegged to screen session ID. Next I guess is some way to distribute it across more than one server.

doogle88 9y ago

Exactly. I gave up on tiling window managers after I learnt to use tmux. I was really only using tiling for my terminals anyway. I had to rebind some tmux keys though to make it more i3 like.

placeybordeaux 9y ago

I'm largely in the same boat, but I use nvim instead. I already learned how to manage panes and tabs in vim so once the terminal mode came out I went ahead and gave a try switching.

zipperhead 9y ago
I actually went a little bit down the nvim route as well, since it has nice built-in shell support. What I think you're missing with just nvim is the tmux scripting capabilities and of course the session management. It's pretty easy to script up a tailored set of tmux sessions/windows/panes. I do this on initial login. Other solutions like tmuxinator/tmux-resurrect exist to automate this setup, if you don't want to script it.

saysjonathan 9y ago

I came to the same conclusion. I wound up making a small tmux lib for dwm-style pane management: https://github.com/saysjonathan/dwm.tmux https://github.com/saysjonathan/dwm.tmux

jshevek 9y ago

As a fan of tmux and xmonad, I was hopeful that tilix might combine the best of both worlds into one tool. After reading your comment, I get the impression that this is not the case.

zokier 9y ago

Highlights one of the big issues in (Linux) desktop: nested inconsistent ad-hoc window management. Consider that in somewhat typical situation you would have your WM/compositor at top managing windows, then something like tilix managing its own panes/tabs, then tmux/screen also managing windows, and finally maybe vim/emacs which also does its own window management. That is four completely independent layers of window management, each of which does mostly the same basic thing. It is interesting to imagine alternative universe where we instead would have advanced enough OS level window management that would allow deeper integration to underlying applications. E.g. something like OS level tree style tab -like window-management might be neat, especially if combined with powerful tiling management.

kps 9y ago
Too bad the Unix philosophy lost out to the Not Unix philosophy.
saulrh 9y ago
Counterpoint: different tools and tasks have different requirements for interaction. Each tool provides an interface specialized to its workflow, and the hierarchical nature of the system allows me to split even inside the same tool for different workflows. My primary window-organization tools are: i3 virtual desktops, web-browser, emacs, and tmux. i3 virtual desktops are named by task/workflow: I have one desktop for project management, one for emacs, one for terminals for one project, one for terminals for another project, one for work-related communication, and one for personal communication. Emacs does its thing and makes great use of it, but its spectacular profusion of buffers and its insane customization never pollutes the rest of my WM because it's contained within emacs. The browser desktops group related tabs, but they go one further and let me put tabs side-by-side without multiple windows of project management polluting my global window list. And so on and so forth. Allowing each tool to specialize information management for its particular use case gives me much better performance overall. It's definitely specialized and idiosyncractic; I would not want to make everyone deal with it. But for me, doing this 8+ hours a day: every time I'm forced to work without that hierarchy and that specialization, I can tell you that the effort is worth it.
imiric 9y ago

thomasjames 9y ago

I've been using Tilix since it's copyright-infringing "Terminix" days as a replacement for Gnome terminal and really like it. While I do most things with it's keyboard shortcuts I sometimes like just mousing between panes and scrolling through history if I'm more reading than actively typing. Per session I use screen for session permanence and it works for me.

bsharitt 9y ago

I'm sort of in the same boat. I've tried Terminator and tiling window managers and finally realized that tmux is what I wanted all along(on tiling window managers it turns out I really only want to tile terminals).

antman 9y ago

I use tmux but not always because i can not preload my systems' env. That seems to be a design decision and thus it cannot replace my terminal.

rogerbinns 9y ago

I wish someone did a terminal emulator that integrates deeply with tmux. eg forward all pane/window management, scrollback etc to tmux while making it appear as native gui features of the terminal emulator itself.

edoloughlin 9y ago
https://www.iterm2.com/ https://www.iterm2.com/ Mac only, unfortunately.
- rogerbinns 9y ago
  I'm not on Mac, unfortunately. I couldn't find anything on the web site showing how the integration happens or works. Presumably it is completely transparent.
  - jamesgeck0 9y ago
    It's transparent, but doesn't seem to map 100%. Last time I used it a lot of stuff in my tmux config didn't work, like keyboard shortcuts.
  - joshstrange 9y ago
    I'm a newbie to tmux but I use it with iTerm and I love it. I use my macbook for work but my dev code/servers are on a linux desktop. When I get into work I ssh to my linux box and type "tmux -CC attach" and my tabs all re-open like normal iTerm tabs and my subdivided terminal windows all restore to right where I left them. It's great for leaving all my watches/running code/tailing logs all open and in panes. It used to take me a couple of minutes to re-setup everything when I got into work but now I just run 1 command and I'm back to where I left off.
godd2 9y ago
There is a branch of Terminator which supports tmux integration.
- 9y ago

ptrincr 9y ago

Thanks for this, just gave tmux a try. Seems fantastic. Tried Version 2.0. Here are the bindings I went for so that it feels more like screen ( what I am used to ), plus being able to use vi like commands for copy + paste: vim ~/.tmux.conf setw -g mode-keys vi unbind [ bind Escape copy-mode unbind p bind p paste-buffer bind-key -t vi-copy 'v' begin-selection bind-key -t vi-copy 'y' copy-selection unbind C-b set -g prefix C-a bind C-a send-prefix Split screen vertically ctrl+a % Split screen horizontally ctrl+a " Copy and paste works like... ctrl+a escape - copy mode v - enter visual mode to highlight y - capture text ctrl+a p - paste into terminal Seems you can use ctrl+a (release) and arrow keys to flip between panes. Plus ctrl+a left/right to adjust pane size.

zipperhead 9y ago
Yes, getting the key mappings to your liking is key. There are lots of resources available. One good place to start is the online book The Tao of tmux https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read. Using copy mode to navigate the scroll buffer is also a useful feature - you can really cut down the use of a mouse in the terminal.

vowelless 9y ago

Tmux with modality is something I use alot. https://github.com/mtl/tmux-modality https://github.com/mtl/tmux-modality I need to iron my workflow out a little bit though as all the modes (especially when you have vim within tmux modality ) can be a little confusing.

GrinningFool 9y ago

Wait'll you get into the extensive API it offers for scripting and various other uses.

pkaye 9y ago

how do you get cut and paste working with tmux? it seems to intermingle text among the different panes.

anonyte 9y ago
I've tried vi mode copypasting and the copycat plug-in but finally settled for just shift selecting and ctrl+shift+C/V my way through everything. Edit: for vertical panes ctrl+shift selection works on gnome-terminal at least.
keymone 9y ago
Yeah, it's a pita. I'm sure there must be a plugin that allows thus to work with OS copy buffer but for now I just zoom on a window when I need it and pipe into pbcopy (macOS) for larger things.
ronjouch 9y ago
As other macOS commenter mentioned, total pita, yeah. Under Linux you need this line of command+xsel voodoo: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Tmux#X_clipboard_integration https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Tmux#X_clipboard_integr...
karlding 9y ago
A quick and dirty way of doing it, assuming the currently active pane is the one you want to copy text from: 1. Enable pane zoom (<prefix> z) 2. Enter copy mode (<prefix> [) 3. Select and copy text You can also look into the tmux-yank [0] plugin, which copies to the native system clipboard. [0] https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-yank https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-yank

foobarian 9y ago

I've been using screen forever but recently I came across the 'eternal bash history' setup and now I don't dread rebooting or restarting the screen daemon any more. I have my shell history dating back 2 years pegged to screen session ID. Next I guess is some way to distribute it across more than one server.