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.)
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 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.
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