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After a Long wait, GNU Screen Gets Refreshed

Posted by timothy on from the s-in-gnu's-not-unix-stands-for dept.

New submitter jostber (304257) writes "It's been a long wait, but now GNU Screen, the most useful CLI windows manager around, is available. Version 4.2.1 was released a couple of days ago and the maintainer's release news is here." There are fewer commits than you might expect for software that's had six years since its last major update, but that could be because the developers have had 23 years to knock out the major bugs.

15 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. One question by n1ywb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does it finally have vsplit?

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    1. Re:One question by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 5, Informative

      The submitter used a link to the announcement of a 4.2.1 minor bugfix release, which isn't very informative if you want to know about new features in 4.2.x. They really should have linked to this announcement instead, which says:

      Hello everyone,
       
      it is my pleasure to announce release of GNU Screen v.4.2.0
       
      available at http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/screen/
      (I will also upload to ftp.gnu.org as soon as my access is authorized)
       
      Many are probably using it due to their distributions packaging
      development versions, so they know at least some of changes.
      Short list of them:
        * layouts
        * window groups
        * better mouse support
        * vertical split
        * new and expanded commands
       
      For full list of changes please check Changelog.
       
      Please note that due to some changes it may be not possible to attach
      to sessions created with older binaries.
       
      With this I also plan to put v.4 into maintenance mode and start
      developing v.5 with cleaned up source code, new features (some already
      in development tree, currently outside of official repository):
        * 256 color hardstatus
        * truecolor
        * firstline hardstatus
        * top line caption
        and more
       
      Amadeusz Sławiński

      And the Changelog is here: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/screen.git/tree/src/ChangeLog?h=screen-v4.

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    2. Re:One question by DocHoncho · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because they're apparently too god damned stupid to just disallow the text direction character(s). The oft cited excuse for lack of unicode support is essentially, "Cuz the trolls would do nasty things," which is, as excuses go, pretty weak.

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  2. most useful? by Arathon · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been using tmux for years now, so my experiential data say no.

    1. Re:most useful? by doti · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I hear tmux is more "modern", but I still use screen because, well, I'm used to it, and it works.

      What tmux does that screen doesn't?

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    2. Re:most useful? by Junta · · Score: 3, Informative

      To my knowledge for screen:
      -screen can target ptys/realserial ports. Useful alternative to minicom or similar. Nowadays it's the most likely application to be installed 'by chance' with that capability (once upon a time, I would generally find cu, but that's almost never around by chance anymor)
      -a split screen can have different people typing concurrently in different panes.

      tmux more gracefully handles multiple terminal sizes connecting and tends to keep you from leaving a shared attach behind when you start trying to do split and such. tmux naturally understands terminal title set sequence and has more handy access to a lot of the best tricks. So 95% of the time tmux hits what is more important to me, but I do get a bit put out when I have a desire to take care of one of the above cases.

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    3. Re:most useful? by mcrbids · · Score: 2

      Two words: Synchronized Panes. For nothing else, this is enough.

      Need to do a semi-repetitive task that's not quite annoying enough to script on a bunch of servers? TMUX to the rescue! You can open 10 windows to 10 different servers, and synchronize what you type so it shows up on all screens, or click on an individual screen to run just that command there.

      For boring admin chores, it's a god-send.

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  3. No screenshots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    What's it look like?

    1. Re:No screenshots by harrkev · · Score: 5, Informative

      Screen is actually surprisingly useful.

      You can throw jobs off to a "screen" instance that can run happily. Then, if you have to VPN in from home, you can grab the screen and pick up where you left off. Combine this with "nohup" and you can have jobs that run even when you log off, and you can regain console control from them at any time.

      In short, it is the "vnc" of the terminal world.

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    2. Re:No screenshots by PrimaryConsult · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Also similar to VNC, you can allow other users read only access to your screen session. Useful for a classroom instruction scenario, or collaboration among remote employees.

      A more niche but still useful feature is the ability to connect to the same screen session from multiple locations simultaneously. Generally I prefer to work from a Linux box, but whenever I need to copy/paste with outlook, having the same session open on a Windows box is quite helpful...

  4. Screen has aged, and it shows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I use screen every single day. But it has aged, and not that well. Also, the quality of the job it does is directly dependent on how good the $TERM and ncurses stack is, and that varies wildly. It used to be much worse, but it can still be rather bad if you have to shell to old crap. Or the bells-and-whistles piece of crap that passes as a terminal emulator in the frisky desktop-environment is buggy (easy to work around: open an xterm).

    The usual alternative to screen is tmux (http://tmux.sf.net), which is much newer and has a better feature set. Google for "tmux versus screen". It also had the advantage of a non-dead upstream, but I hope GNU screen upstream is back into highly active mode for good...

    1. Re:Screen has aged, and it shows by flyingfsck · · Score: 3, Informative

      Still no serial support in tmux, so embedded developers need to use screen.

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  5. Headline should have read... by big_e_1977 · · Score: 4, Funny

    After a Long wait, GNU Screen Gets ^L

  6. Totally newsworthy! by Kludge · · Score: 2

    Look at who posts on this article and you will see who the real nerds are.
    Screen was the first piece of software that I ever downloaded and compiled. That was almost 23 years ago. It was awesome. It gave me lots of virtual terminals on my shiny VT100. I still use it when I have to get stuff done on a slow remote connection. Long live screen!

  7. Re:This is newsworthy??? by synaptik · · Score: 2

    Terminal multiplexers such as screen and tmux still have their place. Not only do they allow you to organize your terminals by task, but they are also detachable from your console. This allows you to (example) start a build at the office, where your machine physically resides, then later from home SSH into your work machine and reattach to the tmux / screen session.

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