Is there anything better than tmux for this purpose? I need persistence but hate the key bindings and general interface.
I have moved between tmux, byobu, and screen at various times in my career. I wouldn’t say one is better than the other, as they all do the job I need just fine (eg persistent session state on remote machines)
But I have a window manager, so all I ever want out of something like screen or tmux is a persistent remote session that survives network issues or me closing my laptop for a bit. Is that something that Zellij is better at?
Just try it and see if you like it. I've found that most of things I didn't like, mainly the default TUI borders and buttons, were far more easily reconfigured compared to tmux.
It is the best of both worlds. And, yes, of course it works with a remote ssh session.
If you also want multiple terminals and screen splits and etc. it's designed to work with dvtm (by the same author) which provides that side of things.
Personally I tend to have a 2x2 grid of xterms on my local machine and four ssh connections to matching dtach sessions named project-{tl,tr,bl,br} but I suspect most people who aren't me would be happier with dvtm.
GNU screen allows for redefining (at least) its hotkey. If tmux allows the same maybe you could redo the bindings more to your liking?
Isn't the default command key ctrl-A for screen? Which is why I've always had to change it (to ctrl-O which is much more sensible) because I can't live without ctrl-A in the terminal etc.
I love tmux and hate the default hotkey