terminal multiplexers - tmux

table of contents

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TMUX IS THE BEST. Here’s a super basic primer.

to start a new session, type tmux new -s tildemux.

A yellow bar will appear at the bottom of your terminal. You’re now in TMUX!

TMUX has sessions, windows, and panes. Each of these things will have a terminal in it. If you actually typed what I told you to earlier, you’ll be in a session named tildemux. That session has one window, 0. That window has one pane, also named 0. (Computers start counting at 0, not 1.)

windows §

Your tmux bar should look like:

[tildemux] 0:bash*

…which means that you’re in a session named tildemux, which has a window 0, running the command bash. * means that window 0 is active, and the pane running bash is currently active.

To create a new window within this session, type PREFIX c. PREFIX?!? By default, it’s control-b. Now you should see:

[tildemux] 0:bash- 1:bash*

1:bash* means you’re in a pane running bash inside window 1. To change back to pane 0, type PREFIX 0. The * should be back on 0:bash.

Run a cool interactive command, such as htop (to see how many of system resources we’re eating up) or vim (to write some awesome webpages). Your tmux status bar should update to 0:<name of the current process>. So now instead of saying bash it will say htop or vim.

panes §

Panes are great. TMUX panes let you run more than one terminal inside your one, actual terminal. To “split” a new pane, PREFIX ". That makes a horizontal split. You’ll notice there are now two panes open one on top of the other. PREFIX % makes a vertical split, for side-by-side panes. Did I mention that panes are great?

To move between panes in the current window, use PREFIX <up,down,left,right>. That’s right, the arrow keys.

more §

I not the best writer or teacher. Just google anything that doesn’t make sense.

Or take a look at this tmux guide

But definitely use tmux.

Or, if you don’t like it - try screen