CIS241

System-Level Programming and Utilities

(mostly) tmux and (a bit of) screen

Erik Fredericks, frederer@gvsu.edu
Fall 2025

Based on material provided by Erin Carrier, Austin Ferguson, and Katherine Bowers

tmux

terminal multiplexer

Way to:

• Split your terminal into panes

  • Each pane is a bash instance

• Have "background" sessions running

Installing (if you don't have it - EOS does):

• sudo apt install tmux or brew install tmux

(Note - only will be showing "common" usages)

Ref: https://hamvocke.com/blog/a-quick-and-easy-guide-to-tmux/

tmux - sessions

Creating a session: tmux

• Green status bar at bottom tells you pane+shell information
• Also, is configurable!

Listing existing sessions: tmux ls

Re-attach existing sessions: tmux attach-session -t <id>

Killing sessions: Ctrl+d or exit

Detaching sessions: Ctrl+b d

• (goes into background)

tmux - panes

In a tmux session:

Splitting panes:

• Horizontally: Ctrl-b "
• Vertically: Ctrl-b %

Navigating panes:

• Ctrl-b <arrow key>

New window: Ctrl-b c

• Navigating: Ctrl-b p (previous) or Ctrl-b n (next)

screen

Also fine - though I don't use it anymore

Does similar things: https://www.baeldung.com/linux/screen-command

(Kind of like the emacs vs vim debate, you'll see people arguing over tmux vs screen)

• tmux is newer and often pre-installed