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Tmux is n clients to 1 server.

Screen is 1 server to 1 client.

In screen each client session is a fork of the screen server. In tmux there's one server and many client forks iirc.

this is incorrect. you can have multiple clients using screen -x instead of screen -a

I didn't say you couldn't have multiple clients, I said clients and servers are the same process forked. Or did someone add distinct client/server support to screen finally? I know theres a lot of stuff bolted onto screen over the years but I wasn't aware they dropped forked servers for the tmux model...

Did a bit of digging; the first client gets forked to create the "server". The forked server then detaches and runs in the background. You're right that -x creates an entirely new, separate client process, unrelated to the OG client or the forked server.

Without -x though it works as originally described.

Edit: gnu screen 1.0 was originally released in 1987. The -x flag was released in screen 3.0 in the 90s. TIL

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