Can you please ELI5 tmux?
I am fairly familiar with Linux, I've been using different distros for some years now and have done some config editing here and there. I am also a web developer and use the terminal quite a lot and so I always stumble on people's recommendation to use tmux and how good it is, but I never really understood what it does and, in layman's terms, how can it be useful and for what use cases.
Can you guys please enlight me a bit on this?
Thank you.
Edit: if my phrasing is a bit awkward or confusing I apologize since I am not an English native speaker. (Maybe that's why I never fully grasped what tmux is from other explanations xD)
Edite: Ok, just to clarify, my original struggle was to understand what made tmux different from using some terminal app and just split the screen xD
Ok, now I guess I am seeing the value of it, specially with the "virtual desktop" analogy and the remote scenario, since I need to do some of it at work and having everything as I left it last time will be nice. Thank you!
plus, if you disconnect in the middle of a command execution it doesn't get killed (very important for system updates for example)
…. or if you get disconnected by, say, dodgy internet connection or such.
Mosh is really good for that as well. It's like the tmux of ssh
I use the "being able to detach and re-attach" capability to run my Minecraft server on my in-home server box.
Imagine you ssh into a server to do a database import, and from previous experience you know it will take about 3 hours. You start the restore, then get up to make dinner. You come back an hour later and realize you forgot to plug your laptop in.
Is the import command still running? Who knows.
With tmux you just charge your laptop, ssh in again, and reconnect to the virtual term that was running the command to check.