terminal multiplexers - tmux

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[1]

But definitely use tmux.

Or, if you don’t like it - try screen[2]

[1] http://robots.thoughtbot.com/a-tmux-crash-course

[2] screen.html