For me, a lot of those use cases are covered by GNU screen. I can quickly switch between multiple terminals (which I label with names like 'edit', 'build', 'ru

For me, a lot of those use cases are covered by GNU screen. I can quickly switch between multiple terminals (which I label with names like 'edit', 'build', 'run', and 'console'). I've experimented with splitting a single window into multiple panes (GNU screen has slightly clunky support for this), but overall haven't found that to be as useful. I use the vim keys for viewing / copying the terminal window history as well as command-line history. For a long time I've eschewed using multiple tabs in Gnome Terminal, but I've started using those as well. Instead of having multiple terminal windows for different hosts, I just use different tabs, and switch between them via Ctrl-PageUp and Ctrl-PageDown. Another option there is to use another level of GNU screen with a different hotkey, but perhaps down that path lies madness.