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Comment by steveklabnik | Hacker News Reader

For some context, the last few releases of screen were:

  * 4.3.0: June 2015
  * 4.2.1: April 2014

I've heard many people say that they use tmux because screen never gets updated.

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I can't tell whether you are trying to claim that it never gets updated or show that that isn't true.

A little of A, a little of B. A new release is a bit newsworthy, since they don't happen super often. But at the same time, "never gets updated" is clearly not true.

Of course it was true.

screen-4.0.3 2008-08-07

screen-4.2.0 2014-04-27

The initial release of tmux was in 2007. The initial release of screen was in 1987. I assume they don't update as frequently because it's relatively stable.

While this is true, screen has not been getting some features that people see as important, like vertical splits.

(I mostly hear about this stuff because I still used screen and tons of people are like "why don't you tmux")

I use screen because tmux forces me to explicitly define quick bindings for each binding where I don't want to lift my finger before pressing the letter. So, where I can write `C-a c` in screen without taking my finger off the keyboard, I have to explicitly add `bind-key C-c new-window` in tmux.conf for this. Otherwise it's not as ergonomic as in screen, and now I have to do configure this for each key I use, which granted isn't that many, but still it's a nuisance without a good justification. Tmux is fine for me if I ignore that. But some people miss certain screen features in tmux, so it's fair to mention that as well.

Why don't you just change the prefix key instead?

  unbind C-b
  set -g prefix C-a
  bind-key C-a send-prefix

I use C-z FWIW.

Nice, that seems to work. Is there a downside to using this?

I had to still explicitly add `bind-key C-a previous-window` to emulate screen's `C-a a` to switch between last windows.

The only real downsites are if you use screen/minicom/etc inside tmux you tend to mash Ctrl-a quite a lot, but if anything that's easier than keeping track of which key goes with which level?

The above is how most people first configure tmux, since C-b is just awkward. `bind-key C-a send-prefix` is optional of course, but is used to forward C-a to the active window (beginning-of-line in shell and emacs). How would you do that in screen?

The default for `previous-window` is `prefix-p`. Run `tmux list-keys` to see all active bindings.

screen supports vertical splits for me, on Debian 8

Isn't a vertical split `Ctrl A, |`?

To reply to you and my other sibling, last I checked, some distros added this, but it's not upstream.

Vertical splits are present from 4.2.0 up.

Why did you stop?

  * 4.2.0:  Apr 2014
  * 4.0.3:  Aug 2008
  * 4.0.2:  Jan 2004
  * 3.9.15: Mar 2003
  * 3.9.11: Feb 2002
  * 3.9.10: Sep 2001

> I've heard many people say that they use tmux because screen never gets updated.

Screen releases did slow down in the early 2000s. It was probably considered feature-complete, so I can understand. I hope the existence of tmux will push both projects to improve themselves, preferably without developing featuritis.

I stopped because those are the only ones on the GNU Savanna news section, and I didn't want to get it wrong. It was an unfortunate chance, seeing the rest of that schedule.

I share your feelings, I hope it pushes both too.

The churn is fairly low in screen and there's nothing wrong with that, just like xterm doesn't see huge changes but periodic releases with whatever changed.

Timed releases of screen might be a good idea.

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