The Tao of tmux: and Terminal Tricks

by Tony Narlock

Is it safe to ditch the GUI and IDE? Learn to navigate the world to the terminal using the tool depended on daily by thousands of system administrators and programmers. With this book, you learn a few things to optimize your terminal workflow quickly, with great potential to pay off down the road as you learn more about tmux's power. What is tmux? tmux is a terminal multiplexer, it allows you to control multiple terminals in a single terminal instance. Does tmux work without a GUI, like in a web server? Yes, any modern terminal! Make sure you have it installed on the system. How do I install tmux now? tmux is available on Unix-like systems. Included in the base system of OpenBSD, it is packaged on all major Linux and BSD distributions, and macOS too. How does this book help? The Tao of tmux breaks down tmux by the way of its objects. From the server, to its sessions, windows and panes. In addition, the book covers how you can configure tmux and utilize shell-friendly applications like entr(1) to rerun commands on file changes, just like an IDE.

Genres: Programming, Nonfiction, Coding, Technical, Technology, Computers

111 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 22, 2017

Reviews

[Mike Doel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Needs an editor

The book provides a what I believe to be a thorough review of tmux, but the writing style is too informal and unstructured for my taste.

[Keysh Jose · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read this all the way through about 3 times and used it for a reference for many months. Great read for a first time tmux user. Helped me get setup and acclimated quickly. I didn't like all the tmux commands for typing as i prefer the shortcuts and key bindings. On first read i thought it was glossed over, but he had it in there on subsequent reads. Some of the code formatting did not translate and format properly for ebook, but i got the gist, not really the authors fault. Now, after using tmux 6+ mo as a daily driver and more advanced user i wish there was some stuff more for me and my workflow which is different, but its all good still. Thank you.

[Ietrio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a particular pleasant read, but the style is clear and there are no flourishings. Also the structure is very precise.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though it is stylistically a mess, I still found it a nice intro into ``book smarts'' of tmux. Made the ways of tmux clear for me in a handful of pages.

[JH · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little messy. Most suitable if you sorta knew what "tmux" is, have tried using it half a dozen times, but have yet to know majority of the available commands.

[Surendra Dangol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written. It's now my goto reference for tmux

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

TL;DR - A hardcore geek book for users of Tmux, who, I would suggest are, by definition, hardcore geeks!

Tmux is not something a lot of computer users will have come across. If you favour an operating system that encourages using the command line then you may be keen to make the most of your 'shell'. One way to do this in a windowed system is to have multiple windows, each with a shell running in it, but Tmux is a better way.

Tmux describes itself as a terminal multiplexer, which means having multiple terminal sessions running within a single window. If that sentence has you scratching your head, then this book probably isn't for you. But if that sounds interesting then this book is for you.