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I don't know about other people - but I spend greater than 99.9% of my time inside a tmux session. It is my windowing environment. I was reading the original

I don't know about other people - but I spend greater than 99.9% of my time inside a tmux session. It is my windowing environment. I was reading the original post and just kept furrowing my brows wondering "Under what possible scenario could any of this possibly be a problem?" It's kind of interesting reading through the threads here and seeing how people don't spend their time inside tmux all the time but instead "start an instance on demand" - which I've never done but I guess works for some people's workflow? I'm genuinely crippled trying to use a terminal without tmux after having used it for so long - don't have the faintest clue how to copy/paste/search/organize windows without it.

echelon 4y ago
I want to echo this sentiment as well. I never use bare terminal sessions. Not locally, and especially not remotely. I think the tmux sentiment in question is held by people new to the tool or that don't use it as a normal part of their workflow or day-to-day.
- bombolo 4y ago
  Something like yakuake does tabbing, splitting, and is scriptable via dbus commands. There is no strong need to learn tmux key bindings to use locally.
  - ghshephard 4y ago
    I was a casual tmux user until I got stuck in a portable trailer in Dubai working for DEWA on their grid, and they had us using a janky remote terminal Remote Desktop setup that didn't have any form of mouse pass through to the linux terminals we were doing work on. So - copy/paste were not possible which made work a pain. I gave them a DVD (!) containing the various ncurses/libevent/tmux code - and voila - I finally had a working environment. I spent 2+ months in that trailer for 6-8 hours/day - and tmux became so embedded in my finger DNA, I never looked back. I routinely bounce between WSL, Linux, and MacOS and never have to remember any of the keyboard shortcuts for the terminal programs, or whether it's been installed, and my fingers never leave the keyboard - and I can almost always outperform someone trying to select/copy with a mouse/touch pad. My .tmux.conf is the only thing I pull along with me. Also - just thinking about it - tmux is more than just a windowing environment - it also does project management. I have a workflow where every new project/issue/incident gets its own named window - and then I break up that window into a set of 4-8 panes based on systems (or sets of systems) I'll be working on. They all share the same bash_history. As I get hit with interrupts, I bounce between sessions and when I come back - my whole thought process/work history is back in that named window with panes. It's not unusual for me to have 45-50 open panes at a time - all perfectly organized by project/named window. With the resurrect plugin, and intelligent use of my bash config - I can (and do) pull everything (scroll back history, bash history, etc..) onto another system if needed (great if you need to recreate your work history and you no longer have access to the original terminal environment). As I close off/complete projects, I terminate the window - but the bash history is kept clean in ~/.tmux/bash_history/window_name in case I ever need to start working on it again (recreating the window with the same name pulls back in the bash history) Introspecting here a little, this honestly is probably more a function of me spending 40+ hours in a terminal environment than anything a rationale casual user would ever want to do.
crabbone 4y ago
Ha! I didn't see you response before writing mine, but, yeah, I had the exact same reaction!
Nullabillity 4y ago
If I'm running in a GUI terminal I can do most of those in there instead. I mostly end up using tmux if I need multiple tabs inside a ssh session.
- cozzyd 4y ago
  Right but then when you ssh to your existing computer from another you won't have all your windows!
  - Nullabillity 4y ago
    Sure, if this is a big part of your workflow then that makes sense. Personally, I end up running 1-2 workstation machines with GUIs that I sometimes remote out from, but ~never into (apart from sometimes retrieving files from the desktop when I'm away).

echelon 4y ago

I want to echo this sentiment as well. I never use bare terminal sessions. Not locally, and especially not remotely. I think the tmux sentiment in question is held by people new to the tool or that don't use it as a normal part of their workflow or day-to-day.

bombolo 4y ago
Something like yakuake does tabbing, splitting, and is scriptable via dbus commands. There is no strong need to learn tmux key bindings to use locally.
- ghshephard 4y ago
  I was a casual tmux user until I got stuck in a portable trailer in Dubai working for DEWA on their grid, and they had us using a janky remote terminal Remote Desktop setup that didn't have any form of mouse pass through to the linux terminals we were doing work on. So - copy/paste were not possible which made work a pain. I gave them a DVD (!) containing the various ncurses/libevent/tmux code - and voila - I finally had a working environment. I spent 2+ months in that trailer for 6-8 hours/day - and tmux became so embedded in my finger DNA, I never looked back. I routinely bounce between WSL, Linux, and MacOS and never have to remember any of the keyboard shortcuts for the terminal programs, or whether it's been installed, and my fingers never leave the keyboard - and I can almost always outperform someone trying to select/copy with a mouse/touch pad. My .tmux.conf is the only thing I pull along with me. Also - just thinking about it - tmux is more than just a windowing environment - it also does project management. I have a workflow where every new project/issue/incident gets its own named window - and then I break up that window into a set of 4-8 panes based on systems (or sets of systems) I'll be working on. They all share the same bash_history. As I get hit with interrupts, I bounce between sessions and when I come back - my whole thought process/work history is back in that named window with panes. It's not unusual for me to have 45-50 open panes at a time - all perfectly organized by project/named window. With the resurrect plugin, and intelligent use of my bash config - I can (and do) pull everything (scroll back history, bash history, etc..) onto another system if needed (great if you need to recreate your work history and you no longer have access to the original terminal environment). As I close off/complete projects, I terminate the window - but the bash history is kept clean in ~/.tmux/bash_history/window_name in case I ever need to start working on it again (recreating the window with the same name pulls back in the bash history) Introspecting here a little, this honestly is probably more a function of me spending 40+ hours in a terminal environment than anything a rationale casual user would ever want to do.

crabbone 4y ago

Ha! I didn't see you response before writing mine, but, yeah, I had the exact same reaction!

Nullabillity 4y ago

If I'm running in a GUI terminal I can do most of those in there instead. I mostly end up using tmux if I need multiple tabs inside a ssh session.

cozzyd 4y ago
Right but then when you ssh to your existing computer from another you won't have all your windows!
- Nullabillity 4y ago
  Sure, if this is a big part of your workflow then that makes sense. Personally, I end up running 1-2 workstation machines with GUIs that I sometimes remote out from, but ~never into (apart from sometimes retrieving files from the desktop when I'm away).