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Comment by danielweber | Hacker News Reader

I love web pages like this. The top of it reads:

"tmux is a terminal multiplexer"

"What is a terminal multiplexer? It lets you switch easily between several programs in one terminal, detach them (they keep running in the background) and reattach them to a different terminal. And do a lot more. See the manual."

That's awesome. So many times someone posts on HN "CaffBook.ly.errr 0.98 now released" and I have no idea what it is or why I would want it.

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I appreciated it too. I've heard tmux mentioned plenty of times but never with a mention of what it is/does. That one line did it.

After years of using screen i switched to tmux.. i'm sure i'm not even using a 5th of the functionality but i love it.

What are the primary advantages that tmux has over GNU screen that you found ?

I'm also wondering about this. I've been using screen for almost 20 years, and wonder if there's a compelling reason to switch.

Take a look here: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/549/tmux-vs-gnu-scre...

Some of it is arguable, but for me one of the greatest benefits is how tmux will auto-resize to the smallest terminal connected, making it useful for screen sharing or when connecting to an existing session from a mobile device.

For me, tmux has saner options and more mnemonic default keyboard shortcuts, that do not interfere with default bash shortcuts (Ctrl-A is goto-home-of-line in bash/emacs, but it is hijacked by screen by default as its escape sequence; tmux uses Ctrl-B for the same by default, which in the emacs bindings means go-back-a-character, and I do not use much, and is less likely to hit by accident).

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