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I've used Tmux/Screen the few times I've had to be in an actual terminal, but don't really see the use for them when using a GUI terminal emulator. I just open

I've used Tmux/Screen the few times I've had to be in an actual terminal, but don't really see the use for them when using a GUI terminal emulator. I just open new tabs or (rarely) windows as needed. Could anyone using these explain what it provides that you find useful in practice? I rarely ever need persistence of shell when I close the console, is that a common need? Familiarity/muscle memory of shortcuts is a valid answer, but I'm wondering if there's more to it than that.

ImprovedSilence 4y ago
Working locally: When you want multiple windows configured more compactly or more customization than any gui emulators. But it really shines for remote work where you’re not running a vnc, where u have a persistent terminal session, maintain all windows etc if you get disconnected.
Gualdrapo 4y ago
I use tmux in a GUI terminal emulator (KDE's Konsole) for a force of habit. It's nice to have split views, tabs and sessions, though Konsole offers tabs and splits, but it's nice to have them when you need to go to a TTY and having your session running there too as if nothing had happened.
Nimitz14 4y ago
In roles like research it happens that one spends tons of time on the command line. It's normal for me to have spent more time in a week running commands in the terminal than writing code.
BrotherBisquick 4y ago
Doesn't it drive you crazy to lose your work whenever X11/Wayland crashes, or you have to kill your display server to diagnose a problem, or you accidentally close a terminal window? tmux preserves everything for you unless you explicitly kill it, or you have to reboot. I started using Screen like 20 years ago (and later moved to tmux) and I can't go back to doing real work in a "bare" terminal window. It would feel like walking on a thin layer of ice on a lake; as soon as something goes wrong, it's a minor disaster.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  Well I use Mac these days, but I've used FreeBSD and Linux in the past as a desktop and don't remember this at all. In the unlikely event everything locks up and dies then mostly I'll just lose vim sessions, and I can vim -r to recover the data. This is rare, and vim complains at you when you start it up on a file after it has crashed. You'd lose the window layouts, but I don't use crazy window layouts, generally no more than two panes for code+tests (running tests I let it flip to fullscreen and scroll and I've got that bound to a key combo in .vimrc). If I had crazy window layouts I'd probably setup a command alias to make it easy to pop them up. When it comes to commands and such, I just use the command history which is my memory. When it comes to running daemon process I would detach them if I cared (and generally I've got command history so I don't care, I'll just restart it, no matter how arbitrarily complicated it was to get the command running). Similarly, though, I don't horde tabs and I HATE it when the O/S starts popping open all the windows I had open after a reboot to upgrade the O/S or whatever. I try to run pretty much "statelessly" so that I can wipe everything and start over from nothing easily enough (obviously not really "statelessly" since e.g. slack remembers all kinds of state about what I've done in the past, but I don't have to remember any of that) And my memory does suck, but I know how to pull things out of command history, internet search, google history, etc. If I need to track stuff, then I use a tool to track it so that it becomes persistent (Zotero has now replaced my folder full of PDFs, I take notes in Obsidian). I don't know what I would ever lose in a terminal window that I fundamentally couldn't get back (and if I ever really needed something such as some unique failure I'd probably take a quick screen shot or copypasta into a note file somewhere -- I'll commonly copy test failures into code comments temporarily while I'm working on them -- sometimes these get promoted to documentation in particularly hairy edge cases). So I literally just pulled up iTerm in activity window and force killed it and I have no idea what disappeared, but I don't care... Based on the saved command history I can see I likely didn't lose anything at all...
yummypaint 4y ago
Say you have a document you are working on in LaTeX over a few weeks. You might have the command line for compiling, bibtex, and git in one pane, then vim or equivalent in another. Now say you will be moving between home, office, and traveling. If the tmux session is hosted at work you can connect from anywhere and be in the same workspace with the same command history. If you have a dozen other projects happening at once this system can also be a big help as far as organization.
- sundarurfriend 4y ago
  Thanks, connecting to a remote tmux session makes a lot of sense to me. It hasn't been a significant need in my work so far, but it's something useful to keep in mind when those scenarios arise.

ImprovedSilence 4y ago

Working locally: When you want multiple windows configured more compactly or more customization than any gui emulators. But it really shines for remote work where you’re not running a vnc, where u have a persistent terminal session, maintain all windows etc if you get disconnected.

Gualdrapo 4y ago

I use tmux in a GUI terminal emulator (KDE's Konsole) for a force of habit. It's nice to have split views, tabs and sessions, though Konsole offers tabs and splits, but it's nice to have them when you need to go to a TTY and having your session running there too as if nothing had happened.

Nimitz14 4y ago

In roles like research it happens that one spends tons of time on the command line. It's normal for me to have spent more time in a week running commands in the terminal than writing code.

BrotherBisquick 4y ago

Doesn't it drive you crazy to lose your work whenever X11/Wayland crashes, or you have to kill your display server to diagnose a problem, or you accidentally close a terminal window? tmux preserves everything for you unless you explicitly kill it, or you have to reboot. I started using Screen like 20 years ago (and later moved to tmux) and I can't go back to doing real work in a "bare" terminal window. It would feel like walking on a thin layer of ice on a lake; as soon as something goes wrong, it's a minor disaster.

lamontcg 4y ago
Well I use Mac these days, but I've used FreeBSD and Linux in the past as a desktop and don't remember this at all. In the unlikely event everything locks up and dies then mostly I'll just lose vim sessions, and I can vim -r to recover the data. This is rare, and vim complains at you when you start it up on a file after it has crashed. You'd lose the window layouts, but I don't use crazy window layouts, generally no more than two panes for code+tests (running tests I let it flip to fullscreen and scroll and I've got that bound to a key combo in .vimrc). If I had crazy window layouts I'd probably setup a command alias to make it easy to pop them up. When it comes to commands and such, I just use the command history which is my memory. When it comes to running daemon process I would detach them if I cared (and generally I've got command history so I don't care, I'll just restart it, no matter how arbitrarily complicated it was to get the command running). Similarly, though, I don't horde tabs and I HATE it when the O/S starts popping open all the windows I had open after a reboot to upgrade the O/S or whatever. I try to run pretty much "statelessly" so that I can wipe everything and start over from nothing easily enough (obviously not really "statelessly" since e.g. slack remembers all kinds of state about what I've done in the past, but I don't have to remember any of that) And my memory does suck, but I know how to pull things out of command history, internet search, google history, etc. If I need to track stuff, then I use a tool to track it so that it becomes persistent (Zotero has now replaced my folder full of PDFs, I take notes in Obsidian). I don't know what I would ever lose in a terminal window that I fundamentally couldn't get back (and if I ever really needed something such as some unique failure I'd probably take a quick screen shot or copypasta into a note file somewhere -- I'll commonly copy test failures into code comments temporarily while I'm working on them -- sometimes these get promoted to documentation in particularly hairy edge cases). So I literally just pulled up iTerm in activity window and force killed it and I have no idea what disappeared, but I don't care... Based on the saved command history I can see I likely didn't lose anything at all...

yummypaint 4y ago

Say you have a document you are working on in LaTeX over a few weeks. You might have the command line for compiling, bibtex, and git in one pane, then vim or equivalent in another. Now say you will be moving between home, office, and traveling. If the tmux session is hosted at work you can connect from anywhere and be in the same workspace with the same command history. If you have a dozen other projects happening at once this system can also be a big help as far as organization.

sundarurfriend 4y ago
Thanks, connecting to a remote tmux session makes a lot of sense to me. It hasn't been a significant need in my work so far, but it's something useful to keep in mind when those scenarios arise.