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Zellij – A Terminal Workspace and Multiplexer

zellij.dev

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Re: Zellij – A Terminal Workspace and Multiplexer

#11

Post by otachack »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #5

What's the point of fitting multiple terminals in a single text-mode screen when everybody is using GUI terminal emulators and tiling window managers? I remember good old pure text-mode days with warmth but doubt there are many people actually doing it nowadays. So I imagine this (thesubject) is going to be ran inside a GUI terminal emulator window and I don't understand how is that better than just having more windo…

That's a good question and I think it depends on the developer. One recent day I became fed up managing my three separate terminal windows with each having a few tabs. I thought "alright, now's a great time to jump into a multiplexer" and it worked well as a catalyst. I downloaded Tmux, set a Tmux shortcut browser window for easy reference, and mimicked my setup in Tmux.

It's immensely a cleaner solution than toying around with separate windows for me. Switching sessions and consoles is seamless and it's all in one window. Eventually something will bite me regarding Tmux getting in the way of something and causing headaches but the momentum I have is great.

I suggest trying one out sometime, it may open a whole new world of tooling for you! Otherwise there's no sweat if you got something working sans multiplexer.

Re: Zellij – A Terminal Workspace and Multiplexer

#13

Post by tyingq »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #5

What's the point of fitting multiple terminals in a single text-mode screen when everybody is using GUI terminal emulators and tiling window managers? I remember good old pure text-mode days with warmth but doubt there are many people actually doing it nowadays. So I imagine this (thesubject) is going to be ran inside a GUI terminal emulator window and I don't understand how is that better than just having more windo…

Not having to touch the mouse. I can't do it myself, but I've watched ops folks using tmux in a productive way that I think would be difficult to reproduce if you involved a window manager.

Re: Zellij – A Terminal Workspace and Multiplexer

#14

Post by busterarm »

tyingq wrote: post #13
qwerty456127 wrote: post #5

What's the point of fitting multiple terminals in a single text-mode screen when everybody is using GUI terminal emulators and tiling window managers? I remember good old pure text-mode days with warmth but doubt there are many people actually doing it nowadays. So I imagine this (thesubject) is going to be ran inside a GUI terminal emulator window and I don't understand how is that better than just having more windo…

Not having to touch the mouse. I can't do it myself, but I've watched ops folks using tmux in a productive way that I think would be difficult to reproduce if you involved a window manager.

You don't have to use the mouse with tiling window managers...

/s heavy tmux user that left it for xmonad.

Re: Zellij – A Terminal Workspace and Multiplexer

#15

Post by bennyp101 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #5

What's the point of fitting multiple terminals in a single text-mode screen when everybody is using GUI terminal emulators and tiling window managers? I remember good old pure text-mode days with warmth but doubt there are many people actually doing it nowadays. So I imagine this (thesubject) is going to be ran inside a GUI terminal emulator window and I don't understand how is that better than just having more windo…

I use a tiling window manager and use tmux - just because I can tile windows doesn't negate my use of tmux.

I have a single window that is all of my terminals - which to me is much easier to manage than a load of random terminals all over the place. Sessions are named, and windows are named, and I have F1-F8 mapped to load the corresponding window, F10 brings up a list of sessions, and F9 toggles between the last 2 sessions.

Mine is based on https://github.com/gpakosz/.tmux but customised for F keys, status bar, mouse etc

Re: Zellij – A Terminal Workspace and Multiplexer

#16

Post by mcjiggerlog »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #5

What's the point of fitting multiple terminals in a single text-mode screen when everybody is using GUI terminal emulators and tiling window managers? I remember good old pure text-mode days with warmth but doubt there are many people actually doing it nowadays. So I imagine this (thesubject) is going to be ran inside a GUI terminal emulator window and I don't understand how is that better than just having more windo…

Anecdata:

I don't want to tile all my windows, only terminals, so I'm not interested in tiling WM.

I also jump between OSs and appreciate being able to have the same terminal multiplexing behaviour on both linux and macOS, without needing to learn the keyboard shortcuts and idiosyncrasies of two different GUI terminal multiplexers.

As another commenter pointed out, being able to multiplex in the exact same way for remote sessions is a massive bonus.

Lastly, tmux has a lot of features and customization and once you learn those you really come to appreciate them. Tmux can also look really quite nice, it doesn't need to look as boring as it does out of the box: https://i.imgur.com/MgUx0U2.png.

Re: Zellij – A Terminal Workspace and Multiplexer

#17

Post by nitnelave »

dljsjr wrote: post #9
qwerty456127 wrote: post #5

What's the point of fitting multiple terminals in a single text-mode screen when everybody is using GUI terminal emulators and tiling window managers? I remember good old pure text-mode days with warmth but doubt there are many people actually doing it nowadays. So I imagine this (thesubject) is going to be ran inside a GUI terminal emulator window and I don't understand how is that better than just having more windo…

Remote sessions. Unless you want to use X forwarding, or create multiple SSH sessions, it's way more ergonomic to do it this way. I currently use tmux for this and when you combine it w/ the tmux command mode (-CC) and iTerm 2 you get the best of both worlds, but even without iTerm 2 integration I still prefer panes to be handled by the multiplexer because then I know I can get my consistent and comfortable environme…

You can multiplex your SSH session and have several ssh commands running on the same connection (without having to type the password/check the security key again). Check the ControlMaster option for SSH.

Re: Zellij – A Terminal Workspace and Multiplexer

#18

Post by doix »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #5

What's the point of fitting multiple terminals in a single text-mode screen when everybody is using GUI terminal emulators and tiling window managers? I remember good old pure text-mode days with warmth but doubt there are many people actually doing it nowadays. So I imagine this (thesubject) is going to be ran inside a GUI terminal emulator window and I don't understand how is that better than just having more windo…

I use tmux/screen when I am working via SSH for some reason. It's nicer to create the layout in a terminal multiplexer rather than having multiple SSH sessions, because if you ever lose connection or your laptop dies, everything is like you left it.

Locally, I don't bother and just use i3.

Re: Zellij – A Terminal Workspace and Multiplexer

#19

Post by ibraheemdev »

busterarm wrote: post #14
tyingq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having to touch the mouse. I can't do it myself, but I've watched ops folks using tmux in a productive way that I think would be difficult to reproduce if you involved a window manager.

You don't have to use the mouse with tiling window managers... /s heavy tmux user that left it for xmonad.

Yeah, I think that the main benefit of tmux is session management. Tiling window managers can replace tmux panes.
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