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Fundamental Productivity Tools: Tmux and Midnight Commander

Tmux​

Tmux is one of the most useful utilities. It allows to run CLI commands in separate tabs and windows – it is like a windows graphical user interface, without the graphical user interface. The power of this utility lies in simple creation of working desktops, inside a terminal.

  • images

With Tmux, you can run multiple commands at once in separate panes.

Basic Shortcuts in Tmux​

All shortcuts are preceded by Ctrl+B by default.

  • zoom or unzoom a selected window pane, z
  • create horizontal pane " , vertical %
  • close selected pane x
  • mark m
  • context menu with right mouse button

Using mouse in Tmux​

  • the touch should work on phone or tablet, in case you can not move with mouse between panes and control their size, use

    tmux set -g mouse on.

You can also add it to the starting script:

Scripting Tmux​

You can easily create batch scripts, starting tmux with specific setups.

  1. Create batch (bash) script without .sh extension, f.i. tmux1, by running touch tmux1,
  2. Edit the file by nano or vim, f.i. nano tmux1
#!/bin/sh
tmux new-session -d 'vim'
tmux split-window -v 'ipython'
tmux split-window -h
tmux new-window 'mutt'
tmux -2 attach-session -d
  1. Make the newly created bash script executable, either by right click menu in the system or by running chmod u+x tmux1 in the bash terminal.
  2. Add the path to the directory of the bash script. If the script is in the already defined path, you may skip this step. export PATH=$PATH:~/nameofdirectory

To add the path permanently for the next sessions, add it to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc file, where are the settings of your bash terminal.

Midnight Commander​

We will return to Midnight Commander in separate chapter.

  • what mc allows
  • secure FTP
  • what to install next

Usefull Packages​