screen vs. tmux - WAS: Does KDE etc.

[Matt Seburn]

On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 11:21 AM, Giles Orr <gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> On 21 January 2014 11:12, Matt Seburn <mattseburn-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
>> I was a longtime user of gnu screen, but discovered tmux 6 months ago or
>> so and haven't looked back.  I should check out terminator.  Does anyone
>> know what the key differences are between them?
>>
>> With my current workspace setup (on KDE, if it matters), I have one
>> terminal window stickied to all of my desktops.  I separate my browser
>> windows by desktop, and have my terminal work separated into tmux
>> sessions.  Works great for me.
>>
>
> As a basic user of screen, I find that there are a couple small but
> annoying things I cannot do in tmux (and I couldn't even tell you what now
> as I haven't used tmux in a while - renaming sessions maybe, something else
> as well) that I can in screen.  So, while I think tmux is probably "the way
> forward," I'm wondering what would motivate a long-time screen user to move
> from one to the other.  I guess I'm hoping you'll tell us the good about
> using tmux and I'll finally make the move and stick with it ...
>

I'm actually having difficulty imagining what could be easier with screen
than tmux.  The only thing I've found even moderately irritating is that
its concept of windows and panes is slightly different than screen.  When
you split a window into panes, it creates a new shell prompt, rather than
pulling one of the windows you already have into the new pane.  So, for
example, if you've got windows 1 through 5 in a session, and want to split
your screen so that you can view windows 1 and 3 side by side, and *don't'*
want to create a new prompt... well, I don't know if there's a way to do
that.

As someone who used ratpoison for a long time, I got used to thinking of
the windows as existing in this amorphous pile "behind" my screen, and the
frames as the thing I actually manage.  Creating a new frame (splitting the
screen) has no impact on the windows, it just gives you a new place to put
them.  So, the tmux way of doing this is a little counter-intuitive to me.

Incidentally, to rename a tmux session, use "rename-session <new name>" at
the tmux command prompt.


> Thanks.
>
> --
> Giles
> http://www.gilesorr.com/
> gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
>
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