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For me it felt (!) like screen is pretty much obsolute since 10+ years. When tmux came I switched and never looked back and I know a few that handled it the sam

For me it felt (!) like screen is pretty much obsolute since 10+ years. When tmux came I switched and never looked back and I know a few that handled it the same.

noosphr 1y ago
Screens main use case is to open an emacs session remotely. Tmux's main use case is to be glue for a unix IDE. The two use cases are rather different and the tools are very specialized for them.
- skydhash 1y ago
  I switched to dtach for the first case.
  - kps 1y ago
    dtach for session persistence. “Do one thing well.”
- anthk 1y ago
  Emacs can work as a daemon.
  - noosphr 1y ago
    It also has tramp mode which means you can use all your local packages remotely.
    - taeric 1y ago
      When I realized how powerful TRAMP was, I don't think I ever used screen/tmux again. I'm sure there are uses, mind. Just TRAMP fully hit all of my needs.
      - kstrauser 1y ago
        It really is magical, isn’t it? And although I rarely need to use it, I love the multihop setups where you can ssh to this system, then ssh again to this other, then mount an SMB filesystem using these credentials, and start editing.
- penguin_booze 1y ago
  > Screens main use case is to open an emacs session remotely. Not an emacs user, but for this, what does screen do that tmux can't?
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    Nothing but replacing it with something newer invalidates decades of muscle memory. I switched to tmux eventually though.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    Nothing at all. I’ve used emacs over tmux (and now zellij) for many years. Emacsserver can replace both of them, but that’s a different story.
- radlad 1y ago
  I'm confused by this statement. Are you claiming this is the projects' stated goal? Their primary use in the wild?
- jstanley 1y ago
  Nah, screen's main use case is as an ad-hoc method to daemonise random scripts.
  - fnordpiglet 1y ago
    Yeah this is 100% of when I reach for screen. “I’m not willing/ready to make this a service, screen detach here I come”
  - senderista 1y ago
    Let's see, we have at least daemonize[0], nohup[1], and disown[2] for that. Some discussion of the differences: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3886/difference-between-nohup-disown-and https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3886/difference-bet... [0] https://github.com/bmc/daemonize https://github.com/bmc/daemonize [1] https://linux.die.net/man/1/nohup https://linux.die.net/man/1/nohup [2] https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/bash/manual/bash.html#Job-Control-Builtins https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/bash/manual/bash....
    - teddyh 1y ago
      A more modern alternative is systemd-run: <https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd-run.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst...>
DrillShopper 1y ago
Try as I might I cannot get my fingers to re-learn the tmux keybindings. The GNU Screen keybindings are that burned into my brain.
- SSLy 1y ago
  SvP https://github.com/grml/grml-etc-core/blob/master/etc/tmux.conf https://github.com/grml/grml-etc-core/blob/master/etc/tmux.c...
  - DrillShopper 1y ago
    If the keys and functionality don't work exactly as GNU Screen does then this won't help me. The behavior and keystrokes are so far burned into my brain that it doesn't make sense at this point to learn a new tool unless/until every system I use under the sun doesn't support GNU Screen anymore.
- Cerium 1y ago
  Thankfully you can configure it. I had the same initial difficulty.
  - imoverclocked 1y ago
    That’s great for your own machine or even common home directory scenarios. The issue is when you have a bunch of machines to manage without chef/puppet/etc or hop onto a random machine or a machine you don’t own etc… defaults are what you get to work with. If screen is there and I need to do something that lasts longer than my ssh session, screen is what I reach for. If it’s non-interactive, I reach for nohup next.
    - SEJeff 1y ago
      If you don’t care about the output or handle it manually, use detail over nohup, it’s a bit nicer.
- cheema33 1y ago
dbdoskey 1y ago
A similar process is happening with zellij and tmux. Since I switched over I feel that tmux is obsolete.
- lxgr 1y ago
  What does it do better than tmux? Or is it more of a fish vs. zsh type of situation, where neither is obsolete, but the target audience is just very different?
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    A quick example is that mouse scrolling works by default. I see it more like ripgrep vs grep. Either can do almost anything the other can, but one has much more modern, ergonomic defaults.
  - eblume 1y ago
    Definitely more of a fish vs zsh situation, in my opinion. tmux, to me, feels like "modern screen". It has some cool features, but at the end of the day, it just wants to be a terminal multiplexer. Great! Zellij on the other hand seems to offer terminal multiplexing as an obvious first-class use case but "not the whole point". At the surface, Zellij is an opinionated terminal multiplexer that uses a nice TUI to give discoverability which you can turn off when you're ready to gain screen real estate. It's easy to make Zellij behave exactly like tmux/screen, and it's easy to configure via a single config file. Where Zellij takes a turn in to a different direction, however, is that the workspaces you can configure with it can do all sorts of interesting things. For instance I once built[0] a python cli app which had a command that would launch a zellij workspace with various tabs plugged in to other entrypoints of that same python cli, basically allowing me to develop a multi-pane TUI as a single python Typer app. In one pane I had the main ui, and then in another stacked pane I had some diagnostic info as well as a chat session with an llm that can do tool-calling back out to the python cli again to update the session's state. I think wrapping up a project's dev environment as a combination of mise (mise.jdx.dev) and zellij or nix+zellij to quickly onboard devs to, say, a containerized development environment, seems like a really neat idea. 0: https://github.com/eblume/mole/blob/main/src/mole/zonein.py https://github.com/eblume/mole/blob/main/src/mole/zonein.py -- but this is mostly derelict code now, I've moved on and don't use zellij much currently.
cozzyd 1y ago
Screen is useful when you need to a nest multiplexing inside tmux. And for serial ports

For me it felt (!) like screen is pretty much obsolute since 10+ years. When tmux came I switched and never looked back and I know a few that handled it the same.

noosphr 1y ago

Screens main use case is to open an emacs session remotely. Tmux's main use case is to be glue for a unix IDE. The two use cases are rather different and the tools are very specialized for them.

skydhash 1y ago
I switched to dtach for the first case.
- kps 1y ago
  dtach for session persistence. “Do one thing well.”
anthk 1y ago
Emacs can work as a daemon.
- noosphr 1y ago
  It also has tramp mode which means you can use all your local packages remotely.
  - taeric 1y ago
    When I realized how powerful TRAMP was, I don't think I ever used screen/tmux again. I'm sure there are uses, mind. Just TRAMP fully hit all of my needs.
    - kstrauser 1y ago
      It really is magical, isn’t it? And although I rarely need to use it, I love the multihop setups where you can ssh to this system, then ssh again to this other, then mount an SMB filesystem using these credentials, and start editing.
penguin_booze 1y ago
> Screens main use case is to open an emacs session remotely. Not an emacs user, but for this, what does screen do that tmux can't?
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Nothing but replacing it with something newer invalidates decades of muscle memory. I switched to tmux eventually though.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  Nothing at all. I’ve used emacs over tmux (and now zellij) for many years. Emacsserver can replace both of them, but that’s a different story.
radlad 1y ago
I'm confused by this statement. Are you claiming this is the projects' stated goal? Their primary use in the wild?
jstanley 1y ago
Nah, screen's main use case is as an ad-hoc method to daemonise random scripts.
- fnordpiglet 1y ago
  Yeah this is 100% of when I reach for screen. “I’m not willing/ready to make this a service, screen detach here I come”
- senderista 1y ago
  Let's see, we have at least daemonize[0], nohup[1], and disown[2] for that. Some discussion of the differences: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3886/difference-between-nohup-disown-and https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3886/difference-bet... [0] https://github.com/bmc/daemonize https://github.com/bmc/daemonize [1] https://linux.die.net/man/1/nohup https://linux.die.net/man/1/nohup [2] https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/bash/manual/bash.html#Job-Control-Builtins https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/bash/manual/bash....
  - teddyh 1y ago
    A more modern alternative is systemd-run: <https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd-run.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst...>

DrillShopper 1y ago

Try as I might I cannot get my fingers to re-learn the tmux keybindings. The GNU Screen keybindings are that burned into my brain.

SSLy 1y ago
SvP https://github.com/grml/grml-etc-core/blob/master/etc/tmux.conf https://github.com/grml/grml-etc-core/blob/master/etc/tmux.c...
- DrillShopper 1y ago
  If the keys and functionality don't work exactly as GNU Screen does then this won't help me. The behavior and keystrokes are so far burned into my brain that it doesn't make sense at this point to learn a new tool unless/until every system I use under the sun doesn't support GNU Screen anymore.
Cerium 1y ago
Thankfully you can configure it. I had the same initial difficulty.
- imoverclocked 1y ago
  That’s great for your own machine or even common home directory scenarios. The issue is when you have a bunch of machines to manage without chef/puppet/etc or hop onto a random machine or a machine you don’t own etc… defaults are what you get to work with. If screen is there and I need to do something that lasts longer than my ssh session, screen is what I reach for. If it’s non-interactive, I reach for nohup next.
  - SEJeff 1y ago
    If you don’t care about the output or handle it manually, use detail over nohup, it’s a bit nicer.
cheema33 1y ago

dbdoskey 1y ago

A similar process is happening with zellij and tmux. Since I switched over I feel that tmux is obsolete.

lxgr 1y ago
What does it do better than tmux? Or is it more of a fish vs. zsh type of situation, where neither is obsolete, but the target audience is just very different?
- kstrauser 1y ago
  A quick example is that mouse scrolling works by default. I see it more like ripgrep vs grep. Either can do almost anything the other can, but one has much more modern, ergonomic defaults.
- eblume 1y ago
  Definitely more of a fish vs zsh situation, in my opinion. tmux, to me, feels like "modern screen". It has some cool features, but at the end of the day, it just wants to be a terminal multiplexer. Great! Zellij on the other hand seems to offer terminal multiplexing as an obvious first-class use case but "not the whole point". At the surface, Zellij is an opinionated terminal multiplexer that uses a nice TUI to give discoverability which you can turn off when you're ready to gain screen real estate. It's easy to make Zellij behave exactly like tmux/screen, and it's easy to configure via a single config file. Where Zellij takes a turn in to a different direction, however, is that the workspaces you can configure with it can do all sorts of interesting things. For instance I once built[0] a python cli app which had a command that would launch a zellij workspace with various tabs plugged in to other entrypoints of that same python cli, basically allowing me to develop a multi-pane TUI as a single python Typer app. In one pane I had the main ui, and then in another stacked pane I had some diagnostic info as well as a chat session with an llm that can do tool-calling back out to the python cli again to update the session's state. I think wrapping up a project's dev environment as a combination of mise (mise.jdx.dev) and zellij or nix+zellij to quickly onboard devs to, say, a containerized development environment, seems like a really neat idea. 0: https://github.com/eblume/mole/blob/main/src/mole/zonein.py https://github.com/eblume/mole/blob/main/src/mole/zonein.py -- but this is mostly derelict code now, I've moved on and don't use zellij much currently.

cozzyd 1y ago

Screen is useful when you need to a nest multiplexing inside tmux. And for serial ports