tmux VS Windows Terminal

This got me thinking about my recent pivot, my switch to Neovim by way of LazyVim to write most of my code, and using tmux to keep terminal states alive after closing a session.

I use Tmux. It's a terminal-agnostic multiplexer. Gives you persistence and automation superpowers.

https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki

Having a common set of tools already set up in different windows or sessions in Tmux or Zellij is obviously an option, but there is a subset of us ( 👋 ) that would rather just have fingertip access to our common tools inside of our editor.

Once you have your Mac or Linux machine ready, make sure to downlaod and install TMUX (Terminal Mulitplexer). A lot of our scripts are going to be running headless inside of a TMUX session as it's an incredibly clean way to manage and organise different workspaces simultaneously. A lot of our scripts will help us to interact with TMUX so don't worry if it looks a little intimidating at first. You can install TMUX using your package manager in the terminal, use whichever applies to you:

After having spent too much time trying to get the simple https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-tmux/ features into mainline tmux (last November https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/3753), maybe it'd be easier to jump ship as use zellij?

Could anyone offer recommendations on "riced" zellij configuations, or just a demo where it shows doing with (say charts of disk usage per folder), watching a movie with mpv + keeping a vim to type on?

Well, I now use tmux and tmuxinator. I have had many failed tmux attempts over the years, but I'm firmly bedded in now.

Which leads me to clipboards. Linux has two of them! Adding to the interest, I typically use Neovim remotely, via an SSH connection to a Tmux session. And on my Linux system, I use urxvt as my terminal program. All of these are very UNIX-y tools, and somehow they all need to play nicely together.

The downside of overmind is that it requires tmux, which is a terminal multiplexer tool. If you don't already use tmux, I'd say it's probably not worth learning it just for the purposes of using overmind. But if you're like me and already know/use tmux, this can be a great solution to pursue.

As a developer, the command line is one of the tools you will be using most frequently. It can be intimidating to venture into the world of CLI tooling but I can assure you it is one of the most rewarding experiences too. In this post I want to walk ya'll through my personal CLI setup. It is based on 3 technologies which I'll coin as the "Holy Trinity" of the command line: TMUX, ZSH, & Neovim.

> convince management of the value

This presupposes that such convincing is even possible. Many, many companies have leadership that are simply terrible at identifying value. If you've never been part of a majority of developers advocating for, if not outright begging for, some huge ROI initiative to get the green light, you are very fortunate.

There are great counterexamples, like Valve, which is known for giving developers an extreme degree of autonomy, and they benefit greatly from that approach. For each Valve, though, there are dozens of companies that manage to succeed despite themselves.

Take Microsoft, for example. One tiny, yet representative, example: the way the Windows Terminal team handled a suggestion from Casey Muratori to take their software from abysmally slow to lightning fast:

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362

A quote from one of the Terminal developers, dismissing the suggestion:

> I believe what you’re doing is describing something that might be considered an entire doctoral research project in performant terminal emulation as “extremely simple” somewhat combatively…

Just how difficult was such an endeavor in actuality? Well, given that Casey implemented his own terminal emulator from scratch and incorporated the functionality he was proposing in a mere weekend... not a whole lot. Relatively minor effort for a huge return on investment. It took Casey explaining the concepts, then providing a working proof of concept, and finally a bunch of backlash online towards the Terminal team to get them to do the right thing for themselves and their users.

At this point ConHost.exe is open source [0] so it is maybe not a stretch to expect Microsoft to open source CMD.EXE at some point.

Though with PowerShell being cross-platform and already open source, I personally don't think there's enough to gain in some sort of better open source CMD.EXE fork. I'd be interested in being proved wrong on that, but I'm also happy enough with PowerShell these days I'm not in a hurry to return to CMD.EXE.

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/tree/main/src/host

"Users of Linux and macOS may well be familiar with the sudo command, used regularly in the terminal, and it looks like Windows may finally be getting its own version."

More Linux tools are coming to Windows, especially Windows Server because the tools are good and they make it easier to administer a Windows Server.

They are looking at adding a default TUI text editor (https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/discussions/16440) and now they are adding sudo.

I would not be surprised if systemd or something like it gets ported or reinvented for Windows simply because it makes managing services so nice.

GitHub

>We are allowed to view and consume it, to be influenced by it, and under many circumstances even outright copy it.

People keep saying this but it's actually much more complicated, and in many cases you can't view copyrighted content.

An example, MicroSoft employees are not permitted to view or learn from an open source (GPL-2) terminal emulator:

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10462#issuecomm...

Another example is proprietary software that may have it's source available, either intentionally or not. If you view this and then work on something related to it, like WINE for example, you are definitely at risk of being successfully sued.

If you worked at MicroSoft and worked on Windows, you would not be able to participate in WINE development at all without violating copyright.

If you viewed leaked Windows source code you also would not be able to participate in WINE development.

An interesting question that I have, is whether training on proprietary, non-trade-secret sources would be allowed. Something like unreal engine, where you can view the source but it's still proprietary.

Windows Terminal is pretty good and a new terminal emulator written in the last few years. No smooth scrolling, here's the GitHub issue requesting it: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1400

Assume its related to this:

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362

It's nothing serious just microsoft engineers writing slow as shit code and reacting poorly to someone trying to help.

"There are plenty of offline scenarios where this would be incredibly useful. For disconnected environments, etc. There are some environments that will never connect to winget."

Source: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/discussions/16440#disc...