Heuristic Blog

I Scream for you Screen

September 23rd, 2006

GNU Screen is a terminal multiplexer: a program that divides one physical terminal connection into many processes. This can be handy when you’re under a non-graphical environment; when you can’t simply open a new terminal tab. You might want more than one terminal screen for any number of reasons:

So you don’t have to keep on saving and exiting a source file to compile a program.
When you want to cross-reference two (or more) files.
To check your mail and surf the web at the same time.
etc.

Screen comes preinstalled on a lot of distributions, but if it isn’t chances are there will be a packaged version for your system:

sudo apt-get install screen

Once it is installed type “screen” at the terminal. This starts you with one “virtual” terminal in addition to the physical terminal you were originally using. These are the essential commands I use:

To create a new virtual terminal, use the command Ctrl-a c. That’s Ctrl held down with a, then release and lower case “c”.
To switch between virtual terminals use Ctrl-a-a.
To divide the screen use Ctrl-a Shift-s.
To switch between the divides use Ctrl-a Tab.
To kill the virtual terminal use Ctrl-a Shift-k. Do this for each of them and Screen will exit.

One Response to “I Scream for you Screen”

Aranil Says:
September 25th, 2006 at 11:34 pm

I haven’t read your blog in a while and I didn’t realize how much I missed these computery talks and rambles that I never understand but still read anyway. Haha… have fun…
SCHOOL! WHOO!
::cough::

I Scream for you Screen

One Response to “I Scream for you Screen”

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