6 ms·

I have been a big fan of GNU screen for many years. What makes Tmux better?

Bayart 6y ago
Fundamentally they do the same thing. TMUX has a nice status bar, it's easier to play around with windows and it's got 256 colours support, as far as I'm aware. But really the difference is in TMUX having a dedicated community while GNU screen is just another GNU utility.
Crespyl 6y ago
When I made the switch from screen several years back, tmux didn't need a patched version to support vertical splits, which was nice. Other things included better support for scripting, nicer configuration, and better mouse support and scrollback behavior by default. Screen may have caught up a bit since then, but tmux seems to have a more active community and generally faster pace of development.
1MachineElf 6y ago
I usually choose Tmux over GNU Screen because it seems more intuitive to use IMO, but I still choose Screen for some cases like connecting to serial consoles.
unixhero 6y ago
Screen is fantastic. Yet tmux btought us the future.
- enriquto 6y ago
  This does not really answer the question. What's so futuristic about tmux, specifically?
  - michaericalribo 6y ago
    When I started using tmux, screen development was stagnant, and basic features (vertical splits, for me) weren’t available natively—a patch was required to enable it. On the other hand, tmux provided it out of the box, and had a vibrant dev community with frequent updates. It looks like the dev situation for screen “reset” around 2014 with the 4.2.0 release, including vertical splits. And that’s great! But for a long time tmux was the future and screen very much the past. By now it’s mostly force of habit, I suspect—but I’ve never looked back from tmux and I’m not sure there’s any reason I would (but by the same token no reason you should switch either).
    - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
      yep... I moved to Tmux specifically for vertical splits. No reason to flip back when they added them to screen years later
  - unixhero 6y ago
    All of screen's functionality plus: Multiple windows Multiple panes Extensibility, plugins and more Search in terminal for text And there is a lot more, which I have not yet learnt. See the tmux awesomelist for a better insight
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pytlicek 6y ago
I used to use the Screen as a terminal multiplexer, but for the last 3 years, I have really only used Tmux. It is not better or worse. It's just different :)
tarkin2 6y ago
I'm sure tmux is great. But I've never seen the need to change. I'd happily read an article that shows me the benefits of changing.
JoBrad 6y ago
I started using tmux several years ago because it had better script support than screen did, at that time. I also liked the session/pane/window handling better (customization made a lot more sense to me, as a vim user), it supported some plugins that I really liked, and the ability to sync panes was a cool feature that came in handy sometimes (grepping logs for load-balanced applications), but I honestly rarely used. But I couldn’t tell you now, without some digging, whether screen supports all these features today, or if it’s perhaps even better than tmux.
leonim 6y ago
Here's my take, most of which is in other comments: If you like GNU Screen, continue using that, they are very similar tools. I’m a long term user of both, using both for a while, and now only using Tmux exclusively. I need a terminal multiplexer, since I often use my main computer via ssh. The main advantage of GNU Screen for me was it was slightly more robust, it crashed less for me. While both are pretty stable. I can run both for weeks at a time, and not have any issues. Though, I’ve heard others report the opposite about stability between the two tools. Tmux has some advantages for me: - Tmux is scriptable. You can run tmux commands to query and set the state of Tmux. It is possible to pipe and process those results. There is some thought behind the commands, that make them consistent and orthogonal. Screen never really could not do much beyond listing the available sessions. - This has made it easy for 3rd party developers to create Tmux plugins, adding some useful features. - I think GNU Screen can now do split screens, but I feel it is easier to do in Tmux. Many times I have a monitor with full a window terminal, and Tmux makes it easy to split that up into smaller independent terminal panes. - GNU Screen development had pretty much stalled for years. Tmux is being actively developed. Outside developers are welcome to make contributions. - The lead Tmux developer, Nicholas Marriot, is actively engaged with users. He responds to bug reports, helping track down bugs, and collaborating with contributors. - I believe GNU Screen development has started again, but to me it just doesn’t have the same level of engagement from the developers. - Tmux has regular releases, compared to Screen - Tmux is more current with the latest ANSI/SGR/OSC codes, and has robust unicode support. This hurt me most when I use a wide terminal (> 256 columns), and wanted to use the mouse, going past a certain column was broken. There is a new encoding SGR 1006, and it didn’t work with GNU Screen, but did with Tmux. GNU Screen picked this up in 2019, but Tmux had it for years before. There are other codes for 24bit color, italics, fancy underlines, etc that GNU Screen doesn’t support, but many modern terminal emulators do. Even ITerm2 has Tmux support builtin. While I generally don’t need these but if/when I do, Tmux just works, while GNU Screen just ignores these codes. While both are capable and usable, there are a lot of details that make Tmux better to me.

Fundamentally they do the same thing. TMUX has a nice status bar, it's easier to play around with windows and it's got 256 colours support, as far as I'm aware. But really the difference is in TMUX having a dedicated community while GNU screen is just another GNU utility.

Crespyl 6y ago

When I made the switch from screen several years back, tmux didn't need a patched version to support vertical splits, which was nice. Other things included better support for scripting, nicer configuration, and better mouse support and scrollback behavior by default. Screen may have caught up a bit since then, but tmux seems to have a more active community and generally faster pace of development.

1MachineElf 6y ago

I usually choose Tmux over GNU Screen because it seems more intuitive to use IMO, but I still choose Screen for some cases like connecting to serial consoles.

unixhero 6y ago

Screen is fantastic. Yet tmux btought us the future.

enriquto 6y ago
This does not really answer the question. What's so futuristic about tmux, specifically?
- michaericalribo 6y ago
  When I started using tmux, screen development was stagnant, and basic features (vertical splits, for me) weren’t available natively—a patch was required to enable it. On the other hand, tmux provided it out of the box, and had a vibrant dev community with frequent updates. It looks like the dev situation for screen “reset” around 2014 with the 4.2.0 release, including vertical splits. And that’s great! But for a long time tmux was the future and screen very much the past. By now it’s mostly force of habit, I suspect—but I’ve never looked back from tmux and I’m not sure there’s any reason I would (but by the same token no reason you should switch either).
  - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
    yep... I moved to Tmux specifically for vertical splits. No reason to flip back when they added them to screen years later
- unixhero 6y ago
  All of screen's functionality plus: Multiple windows Multiple panes Extensibility, plugins and more Search in terminal for text And there is a lot more, which I have not yet learnt. See the tmux awesomelist for a better insight

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pytlicek 6y ago

I used to use the Screen as a terminal multiplexer, but for the last 3 years, I have really only used Tmux. It is not better or worse. It's just different :)

tarkin2 6y ago

I'm sure tmux is great. But I've never seen the need to change. I'd happily read an article that shows me the benefits of changing.

JoBrad 6y ago

I started using tmux several years ago because it had better script support than screen did, at that time. I also liked the session/pane/window handling better (customization made a lot more sense to me, as a vim user), it supported some plugins that I really liked, and the ability to sync panes was a cool feature that came in handy sometimes (grepping logs for load-balanced applications), but I honestly rarely used. But I couldn’t tell you now, without some digging, whether screen supports all these features today, or if it’s perhaps even better than tmux.

leonim 6y ago

Here's my take, most of which is in other comments: If you like GNU Screen, continue using that, they are very similar tools. I’m a long term user of both, using both for a while, and now only using Tmux exclusively. I need a terminal multiplexer, since I often use my main computer via ssh. The main advantage of GNU Screen for me was it was slightly more robust, it crashed less for me. While both are pretty stable. I can run both for weeks at a time, and not have any issues. Though, I’ve heard others report the opposite about stability between the two tools. Tmux has some advantages for me: - Tmux is scriptable. You can run tmux commands to query and set the state of Tmux. It is possible to pipe and process those results. There is some thought behind the commands, that make them consistent and orthogonal. Screen never really could not do much beyond listing the available sessions. - This has made it easy for 3rd party developers to create Tmux plugins, adding some useful features. - I think GNU Screen can now do split screens, but I feel it is easier to do in Tmux. Many times I have a monitor with full a window terminal, and Tmux makes it easy to split that up into smaller independent terminal panes. - GNU Screen development had pretty much stalled for years. Tmux is being actively developed. Outside developers are welcome to make contributions. - The lead Tmux developer, Nicholas Marriot, is actively engaged with users. He responds to bug reports, helping track down bugs, and collaborating with contributors. - I believe GNU Screen development has started again, but to me it just doesn’t have the same level of engagement from the developers. - Tmux has regular releases, compared to Screen - Tmux is more current with the latest ANSI/SGR/OSC codes, and has robust unicode support. This hurt me most when I use a wide terminal (> 256 columns), and wanted to use the mouse, going past a certain column was broken. There is a new encoding SGR 1006, and it didn’t work with GNU Screen, but did with Tmux. GNU Screen picked this up in 2019, but Tmux had it for years before. There are other codes for 24bit color, italics, fancy underlines, etc that GNU Screen doesn’t support, but many modern terminal emulators do. Even ITerm2 has Tmux support builtin. While I generally don’t need these but if/when I do, Tmux just works, while GNU Screen just ignores these codes. While both are capable and usable, there are a lot of details that make Tmux better to me.