#review #multiplexer #cli # Zellij [[Zellij - Terminal Multiplexer|Zellij]] is a terminal multiplexer written in Rust. Zellij does not have an internal clipboard/buffer like tmux. It is intended to talk directly to your terminal emulator's clipboard via ANSI sequences. Which is great unless you are trying to use it in text mode that doesn't support clipboards such as the linux framebuffer or TTY. ```cardlink url: https://github.com/zellij-org/zellij/issues/1288 title: "Improve copy / paste support · Issue #1288 · zellij-org/zellij" description: "As a zellij user, I couldn't figure out how to paste text. When selecting a text in the terminal, the status bar shows \"Text copied to clipboard\". However, I tried various ways but couldn't manager..." host: github.com favicon: https://github.githubassets.com/favicons/favicon.svg image: https://opengraph.githubassets.com/a780f9b06d00009c732fb564760bf36822c113f03961a58ac43d1d9b4b9503d6/zellij-org/zellij/issues/1288 ``` There is a capable [workaround](https://zellij.dev/documentation/faq.html#copy--paste-isnt-working-how-can-i-fix-this) though, which allows it to use an external command for copy/paste which could be set up to emulate a traditional clipboard with a temp file. # Tmux [[tmux - Terminal Multiplexer|tmux]] picked up where Screen left off. It is written in C. It is the standard by which all others are measured. Unfortunately, it is maintained mostly by one person and a small group of his followers. This group is often curt and rude to anyone with feature requests, bug reports, or code patches. They are not interested in ideas they feel are outside of the scope of tmux, but it is not clear upon what that scope is, and it often feels arbitrary. Despite this it is actively developed with a lot of contributions. The developers believe that everyone should read the changelog of every piece of software on their system to ensure that are able to deal with breaking changes. While Tmux does often keep deprecated functions around for years, it is not easy to know about those deprecations until they've been removed. Due to actively blocking certain features from being developed and the overall poor experience with the devs and community, I'm looking for a replacement. While this is silly, the thing that pushed me over the edge with Tmux was when they [refused](https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/1939) to [support](https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/142) the XDG .config directory, so the tmux files continue to take up space in my home directory along with other vintage programs and a billion other things dumping files there. Having to create a special wrapper just to call `tmux -f` is silly. They [eventually](https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/142) very reluctantly [allowed](https://github.com/tmux/tmux/commit/f87be8d0521436c47151233f781794dee94fc1df#diff-c949f93d03f44a4217d7a138f9e2e54aR16) it in after much outcry and a lot of rude comments to people who were being very nice. # Byobu [[Byobu - Terminal Multiplexer]] # Screen I used [Screen](https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/) for many years before feeling like it had gotten clunky and wasn't keeping up with the demand for better integrations and functionality. It is a dinosaur and moves slowly but gets the basic job done and is widely available. It has literally been so long since I used it that I no longer remember much about it. I still use its default mapping of `ctrl+a` as the prefix in other multiplexers though. # mtm - https://github.com/deadpixi/mtm > Perhaps the smallest useful terminal multiplexer in the world. ## Philosophy *Simplicity* There are only a few commands, two of which are hardly ever used. There are no modes, no dozens of commands, no crazy feature list. *Compatibility* mtm emulates a classic ANSI text terminal. That means it should work out of the box on essentially all terminfo/termcap-based systems (even pretty old ones), without needing to install a new termcap entry. *Size* mtm is small. The entire project is around 1000 lines of code. *Stability* mtm is "finished" as it is now. You don't need to worry about it changing on you unexpectedly. The only changes that can happen at this point are: - Bug fixes. - Translation improvements. - Accessibility improvements. - Fixes to keep it working on modern OSes.