Using tmux for productive mouse-free programming

See how Brian Hogan uses tmux to write code faster. For a more in-depth look at tmux, take a look at Brian's new book at pragprog.com/book/bhtmux.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Joshua Warchol]

Wish this was in a higher res. 480 at least.

[Joseph Bane]

How is this different than GNU Screen?

[agu monkey]

vertical split by default (maybe it's not the case anymore, but screen requires a patch for that), a different data model underneath enabling sharing your session (you can let someone collaborate with you), a simple command model that enable easy scripting.

[Baptiste Mille-Mathias]

If I recall correctly, Ctrl+B arrow.

[Baptiste Mille-Mathias]

code-wise Screen is said to be a giant spaghetti code (that's would explain the lack of maintenance).

From user perspective, the performance is totally different, as a sysadmin I use to scroll over long files, and in screen it was really really slow, but in tmux it's blazing fast.

In screen, I used to have lock up behavior, and had to kill all my session; I've never get that in tmux. I used to use screen for years, and I made the jump last year and I'll never to get back to screen.

[shmikimhs]

The main difference is that tmux uses a client-server model, with each session acting as a client. It's also much more configurable and has a bunch of little options that screen just doesn't have. Another advantage is that it's much newer than screen--screen has a bunch of old features (like connecting to serial devices) that really show its age, and it was last updated in 2006, while the latest tmux version literally just came out today. So I'd take tmux any day.

[lordmonkey]

How do you resize the panes ? (increse the width or height) 

[NARKOZ2008]

The source code of GNU applications, such as GNU Screen, is generally regarded as buggy and unmaintainable.

[sporkonomix]

It's not much different, but it has modern configuration. Specifically, it's much easier to modify the window title and the statusbar(s).

[pstcontrl]

I just started playing with tmux myself, but Wikipedia has a list that may answer your question.

[AppA]

It's similar, but it's included by default in OpenBSD, so I guess you can say that the code is heavily audited and bloat free.

[Corey Richardson]

@HavocBane, @hott85: tmux is newer, and isn't bogged down with legacy. In particular it has cleaner configuration, more extensibility, and hell of a lot cleaner code (GNU software almost always has ugly source, but with a clean API), as well as the things mentioned by others.