
GNU Screen v.4.2.1 - sikhnerd
https://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=7961
======
sikhnerd
Notables from 4.2.0:

    
    
      * layouts
      * window groups
      * better mouse support
      * vertical split
      * new and expanded commands
    

Though I doubt this will entice me back from tmux, even though my primary
motivator at the time (ages ago) was lack of vsplit in screen.

Also notable is if you upgrade you can't re-attach to sessions started by an
older version of screen.

~~~
mhd
That was my problem with tmux. I don't really care for vsplit (and could've
had that with screen patches), so feature-wise there's no big difference. Some
version of screen is often pre-installed on servers, so that's probably my
first choice when it comes to situations where running things in the
background is my prime motivation. For multiplexing on my home system that's
not an issue, so both would be fine.

I recently started trying out tmux for that purpose as someone told me its
memory usage wasn't as creeping. Can't really detect a big difference, though,
after a while both of them take up a few hundred megs.

Not close to the vim vs. emacs holy war level. More like emacs vs. xemacs.

Or did I miss some hidden gems of either of them?

~~~
cturner
There's a feature that I've discovered recently that makes vertical split a
lot more useful. It's PREFIX+z. it maximises the current pane. This means you
can use mouse to select-copy without spanning multiple panes. Then you can do
PREFIX+z to return to panes.

    
    
        > did I miss some hidden gems of either of them?
    

They're pretty similar. I think I moved to tmux because it was easier to get
going in openbsd.

An odd advantage I've found for it - there's a great book - Pragmatic Guide to
Tmux. It's very thin, yet contained all of the features I thought I wanted,
and a couple of more that I didn't know about (including the z thing from
above). I like books that are both thin and yet contain everything I want.

~~~
gcb0
Heh. My reason from screen is the exact opposite. It's easier to be available
on all servers i ever connect to... which is why i won't care for those
features anytime soon.

------
Nux
Been using Screen for more than 10 years and it has been stable like a
mountain! The only new feature that I care about slightly is the vertical
split (frickin wide screens!)

Here's to another 10 years of Screen!

~~~
smtddr
Maybe you know the answer to this then. Can I tab backwards? Been using screen
since 2007 and still can't figure it out.

The stuff in this link doesn't appear to work...
[http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/14142/gnu-screen-
mov...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/14142/gnu-screen-move-between-
regions)

~~~
erre
C-a <TAB> is bound to the "focus" command. "focus" can receive parameters
("up", "down", "top" and "bottom") Without parameters, it defaults to "down",
which is why you cycle downwards with you press C-a <TAB>.

To tab backwards, you call "focus up". It's not bound by default, but you can
bind to, say, C-a U:

bind U focus up

and from then on "C-a U" cycles upwards.

------
rlpb
I'd really like to see GUI integration with screen. I'd like my X terminal
application to be able to attach to a GNU screen session, display all my
screen windows as tabs, and then later detach again.

~~~
xioxox
Well, there is xpra, [https://www.xpra.org/](https://www.xpra.org/) which
allows disconnection and reconnection of X apps. It's pretty good when you get
it to work.

~~~
listic
Thanks for introducing me to Xpra! I feel this is a tool that will need some
getting used to.

Where does it stand in multi-user scheme of work? Suppose I need to give
several users access to a certain application running on a remote server. Do I
create separate user accounts for each user on that remote server? Do they
start a separate display for each user? Where should I ask my noobish
questions?

~~~
xioxox
I'm no expert, but each user can create an xpra session, which they can
connect to remotely by ssh. You just need to install it and provide ssh
access. I don't know whether other options might work.

x2go might be an alternative, where you connect to get a complete desktop.

------
vsbuffalo
Neat changes, but I'm still going to stick with tmux. Tmux not only works
better, it's changed the way I develop. Everything is done in a Tmux window
with Vim and shell. Tmux is how you can create a shell-based IDE with splits
and different functionality. I came from Emacs, and liked the IDE-ness of it,
but I can capture almost all of that behavior with tmux + vim.

------
scriptdevil
The status line syntax of screen was terrible. It was almost read like a magic
incantation. tmux felt way better. I wonder if this changed at all.

~~~
ordinary

      caption always "%?%F%{w}%:%{K}%? %{R}%H%{-} %{B}>>%{-} %L=%{k}%-Lw%45>%{G}%n%f %t%{-}%+Lw%=%{-}%-22<%{B}<<%{-} %{R}%Y-%m-%d %0c:%s%{-}"
    

Nope, it's still terrible. :)

~~~
ansible
Yeah. They took ideas from things like PS1 setting with Bourne shell, and kept
going. Keeping the variables to single letters was intended to have the format
string be approximately the same length as it might actually be displayed.
However, that doesn't work well in practice. It would be better to go with
keywords (or maybe even key-phrases) instead.

------
gitaarik
I still use Screen every day. I tried to switch to tmux, but tmux's copy mode
isn't as good as screen's. For example, in tmux you can't search case
insensitive in copy mode, which is really a must for me. I think that's
probably the biggest reason I didn't switch.

Am I the only one who extensively uses the copy mode?

------
listic
What is the advised way of using the new version on CentOS?

Will the new version land in any of CentOS repositories?
[http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories](http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories)

------
rafaelnonato
I use tmux because in it vim can be set to show in italics what should be
shown in italics.

------
woopdy
Best CLI program ever!

~~~
dllthomas
It's not really a CLI. In traditional parlance it's a CUI, though it
frequently _hosts_ a CLI...

~~~
woopdy
What's the 'U'?

~~~
dllthomas
User, like in GUI.

CUI is either "Character User Interface", "Console User Interface", or
"Captive User Interface". The first two are mostly orthogonal to "Command Line
Interface" (CLI), which can be character based or graphical. The last asserts
that the interface fails to play well with the shell, which is nearly always
true of GUIs and is frequently true of console programs that make heavy use of
ncurses (though not always, and can be true without that).

------
zatkin
Sorry screen, but you're too late. I've been using tmux for as long as I can
remember! ... unless someone can convince me of reasons to switch? :)

