GNU Screen v4.8

lists.gnu.org

26 points·lelf··10 comments

Is there any reason to use screen over tmux?

(I really hate posting a comment like this, since it seems poor form to point out a competing project on the release notes of some other project. But screen and tmux are so fundamental to dev workflows that if there's an advantage, I was hoping to know about it.)

TBH I don't think so. Screen is great, but overall tmux is better. Screen is often shipped by default with linux OSes so maybe there's some advantage for airgapped machines, etc.

I personally find that screen tries to do less, and therefore, gets in my way less. Also, emacs-style keybindings fit better with the general interaction model of the shell, which also uses emacs-style keybindings.

I know that one can switch to vim-style keybindings in the shell, but they have never felt as "comfortable" (and I use vim as my daily driver).

Last but not least, the default keybinding for splitting in tmux (C-b ") is just awkward. Screen has way better defaults.

I have used it in the past to connect to devices over serial.

Same reason as the reason to use a prius when maseratis are available. sometimes a simple tool is better

Familiarity.

I'm a tmux man myself, but I'm really glad to see that screen is still being actively maintained.

i've been using screen my entire development career. it's a great tool, thank you.

FWIW, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 removed screen in favor of tmux.

"The screen utility has an old code base that is not easy to maintain and with little activity in the upstream community. The tmux package was viewed as having a better code base to maintain and build new features upon."

https://access.redhat.com/solutions/4136481

Reply on news.ycombinator.com