What are some alternatives to tmux?

What is tmux and what are its top alternatives?

Tmux is a popular terminal multiplexer that allows users to create and manage multiple terminal sessions within a single window. It offers features such as split-screen functionality, session management, and customization options through configuration files. However, some limitations of tmux include a steep learning curve for beginners and a command-driven interface that may not be as intuitive for all users.

GNU Screen: GNU Screen is one of the oldest terminal multiplexers, allowing users to create multiple virtual terminals within a single session. Key features include session management, detachable sessions, and window splitting. Pros include its long-standing reputation and stability, while cons may include a less modern interface compared to tmux.
i3: i3 is a tiling window manager that offers a different approach to managing terminal windows. It automatically tiles windows based on predefined layouts, allowing for efficient use of screen real estate. Key features include customizable keyboard shortcuts, workspace management, and a dynamic tiling system. Pros include its efficiency in managing windows, while cons may include a steeper learning curve compared to tmux.
Terminator: Terminator is a terminal emulator that offers features such as splitting terminals horizontally and vertically, multiple tabs, and customizable layouts. Key features include drag-and-drop reordering of terminals, session saving, and plugin support. Pros include its user-friendly interface and extensive customization options, while cons may include potential resource usage depending on the configurations.
Kitty: Kitty is a fast and feature-rich terminal emulator that supports the splitting of terminal windows, GPU rendering, and a focus on performance. Key features include the ability to display images and Unicode characters, customizable key bindings, and a well-documented configuration file. Pros include its speed and modern feature set, while cons may include a potentially overwhelming number of configuration options for some users.
Alacritty: Alacritty is a cross-platform terminal emulator written in Rust with a focus on simplicity and performance. Key features include GPU rendering, vi-like key bindings, and a minimalistic user interface. Pros include its speed and responsiveness, while cons may include a lack of advanced features compared to tmux.
ConEmu: ConEmu is a Windows console emulator that offers features such as tabs, split panes, and customizable color schemes. Key features include customizable hotkeys, support for multiple shells, and integration with other tools such as Far Manager. Pros include its extensive customization options and compatibility with Windows, while cons may include a potentially overwhelming number of settings for some users.
Hyper: Hyper is an open-source terminal built on web technologies, featuring a customizable interface, plugin support, and a focus on extensibility. Key features include built-in themes, keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to create custom plugins using JavaScript. Pros include its modern interface and active community, while cons may include potential performance issues depending on the configurations and plugins used.
Terminus: Terminus is a terminal emulator based on Electron that offers features such as tabs, panes, and customization options. Key features include integrated search, custom themes, and support for multiple platforms. Pros include its modern interface and ease of use, while cons may include potential resource usage due to being built on Electron.
Tilix: Tilix is a tiling terminal emulator for Linux with features such as tabs, multiple panes, and session saving. Key features include custom layouts, terminal transparency, and profile management. Pros include its customization options and user-friendly interface, while cons may include potential bugs and stability issues depending on the system configuration.
Xfce Terminal: Xfce Terminal is a lightweight terminal emulator for the Xfce desktop environment, offering features such as tabs, customizable key bindings, and color schemes. Key features include drag-and-drop reordering of tabs, profile support, and terminal preferences. Pros include its simplicity and integration with the Xfce desktop, while cons may include a lack of advanced features compared to tmux.

Top Alternatives to tmux

Emacs
GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing. ...
Docker
The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere ...
iTerm2
A replacement for Terminal and the successor to iTerm. It works on Macs with macOS 10.12 or newer. iTerm2 brings the terminal into the modern age with features you never knew you always wanted. ...
Vim
Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware. ...
JavaScript
JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles. ...
Python
Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best. ...
Node.js
Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices. ...
HTML5
HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997. ...

tmux alternatives & related posts

Emacs

1.3K

322

The extensible self-documenting text editor.

Stacks1.3K

Votes322

PROS OF EMACS

65
Vast array of extensions
44
Have all you can imagine
40
Everything i need in one place
39
Portability
32
Customer config
16
Your config works on any platform
13
Low memory consumption
11
Perfect for monsters
10
All life inside one program
8
Extendable, portable, fast - all at your fingertips
6
Enables extremely rapid keyboard-only navigation
5
Widely-used keybindings (e.g. by bash)
5
Extensible in Lisp
5
Runs everywhere important
4
FOSS Software
4
Powerful multilanguage IDE
4
Git integration
4
May be old but always reliable
3
Asynchronous
3
Powerful UI
1
Huge ecosystem

CONS OF EMACS

4
So good and extensible, that one can get sidetracked
4
Hard to learn for beginners
1
Not default preinstalled in GNU/linux

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Docker

178.5K

3.9K

Enterprise Container Platform for High-Velocity Innovation.

Stacks178.5K

Votes3.9K

PROS OF DOCKER

823
Rapid integration and build up
692
Isolation
521
Open source
505
Testability and reproducibility
460
Lightweight
218
Standardization
185
Scalable
106
Upgrading / downgrading / application versions
88
Security
85
Private paas environments
34
Portability
26
Limit resource usage
17
Game changer
16
I love the way docker has changed virtualization
14
Fast
12
Concurrency
8
Docker's Compose tools
6
Easy setup
6
Fast and Portable
5
Because its fun
4
Makes shipping to production very simple
3
Highly useful
3
It's dope
2
Package the environment with the application
2
Super
2
Open source and highly configurable
2
Simplicity, isolation, resource effective
2
MacOS support FAKE
2
Its cool
2
Does a nice job hogging memory
2
Docker hub for the FTW
2
HIgh Throughput
2
Very easy to setup integrate and build
0
Asdfd

CONS OF DOCKER

8
New versions == broken features
6
Unreliable networking
6
Documentation not always in sync
4
Moves quickly
3
Not Secure

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iTerm2

431

macOS Terminal Replacement

Stacks431

Votes7

PROS OF ITERM2

5
Themes
2
Tabs

CONS OF ITERM2

Be the first to leave a con

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Vim

28K

2.4K

Highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing

Stacks28K

Votes2.4K

PROS OF VIM

347
Comes by default in most unix systems (remote editing)
328
Fast
312
Highly configurable
297
Less mouse dependence
247
Lightweight
145
Speed
100
Plugins
97
Hardcore
82
It's for pros
65
Vertically split windows
30
Open-source
25
Modal editing
22
No remembering shortcuts, instead "talks" to the editor
21
It stood the Test of Time
16
Unicode
13
VimPlugins
13
Everything is on the keyboard
13
Stick with terminal
12
Dotfiles
11
Flexible Indenting
10
Hands stay on the keyboard
10
Efficient and powerful
10
Programmable
9
Everywhere
9
Large number of Shortcuts
8
A chainsaw for text editing
8
Unmatched productivity
7
Developer speed
7
Super fast
7
Makes you a true bearded developer
7
Because its not Emacs
7
Modal editing changes everything
6
You cannot exit
6
Themes
5
EasyMotion
5
Most and most powerful plugins of any editor
5
Shell escapes and shell imports :!<command> and !!cmd
5
Intergrated into most editors
5
Shortcuts
5
Great on large text files
5
Habit
5
Plugin manager options. Vim-plug, Pathogen, etc
4
Intuitive, once mastered
4
Perfect command line editor
1
Not MicroSoft

CONS OF VIM

8
Ugly UI
5
Hard to learn

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JavaScript

370.8K

8.1K

Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions

Stacks370.8K

Votes8.1K

PROS OF JAVASCRIPT

1.7K
Can be used on frontend/backend
1.5K
It's everywhere
1.2K
Lots of great frameworks
899
Fast
746
Light weight
425
Flexible
392
You can't get a device today that doesn't run js
286
Non-blocking i/o
237
Ubiquitousness
191
Expressive
55
Extended functionality to web pages
49
Relatively easy language
46
Executed on the client side
30
Relatively fast to the end user
25
Pure Javascript
21
Functional programming
15
Async
13
Full-stack
12
Its everywhere
12
Future Language of The Web
12
Setup is easy
11
JavaScript is the New PHP
11
Because I love functions
10
Like it or not, JS is part of the web standard
9
Everyone use it
9
Can be used in backend, frontend and DB
9
Easy
9
Expansive community
8
For the good parts
8
Easy to hire developers
8
No need to use PHP
8
Most Popular Language in the World
8
Powerful
8
Can be used both as frontend and backend as well
7
It's fun
7
Its fun and fast
7
Popularized Class-Less Architecture & Lambdas
7
Agile, packages simple to use
7
Supports lambdas and closures
7
Love-hate relationship
7
Photoshop has 3 JS runtimes built in
7
Evolution of C
7
Hard not to use
7
Versitile
7
Nice
6
Easy to make something
6
Can be used on frontend/backend/Mobile/create PRO Ui
6
1.6K Can be used on frontend/backend
6
Client side JS uses the visitors CPU to save Server Res
6
It let's me use Babel & Typescript
5
Clojurescript
5
Everywhere
5
Scope manipulation
5
Function expressions are useful for callbacks
5
Stockholm Syndrome
5
Promise relationship
5
Client processing
5
What to add
4
Because it is so simple and lightweight
4
Only Programming language on browser
1
Subskill #4
1
Test2
1
Easy to understand
1
Not the best
1
Easy to learn
1
Hard to learn
1
Easy to learn and test
1
Love it
1
Test
0
Hard 彤

CONS OF JAVASCRIPT

22
A constant moving target, too much churn
20
Horribly inconsistent
15
Javascript is the New PHP
9
No ability to monitor memory utilitization
8
Shows Zero output in case of ANY error
7
Thinks strange results are better than errors
6
Can be ugly
3
No GitHub
2
Slow
0
HORRIBLE DOCUMENTS, faulty code, repo has bugs

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Python

250.2K

6.9K

A clear and powerful object-oriented programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or Java.

Stacks250.2K

Votes6.9K

PROS OF PYTHON

1.2K
Great libraries
965
Readable code
848
Beautiful code
789
Rapid development
692
Large community
439
Open source
394
Elegant
283
Great community
274
Object oriented
222
Dynamic typing
78
Great standard library
62
Very fast
56
Functional programming
52
Easy to learn
47
Scientific computing
36
Great documentation
30
Productivity
29
Matlab alternative
29
Easy to read
25
Simple is better than complex
21
It's the way I think
20
Imperative
19
Very programmer and non-programmer friendly
19
Free
17
Powerfull language
17
Machine learning support
16
Fast and simple
14
Scripting
12
Explicit is better than implicit
11
Ease of development
10
Clear and easy and powerfull
9
Unlimited power
8
It's lean and fun to code
8
Import antigravity
7
Print "life is short, use python"
7
Python has great libraries for data processing
6
Although practicality beats purity
6
Fast coding and good for competitions
6
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious
6
High Documented language
6
Readability counts
6
Rapid Prototyping
6
I love snakes
6
Now is better than never
6
Flat is better than nested
6
Great for tooling
5
Great for analytics
5
Web scraping
5
Lists, tuples, dictionaries
4
Complex is better than complicated
4
Socially engaged community
4
Plotting
4
Beautiful is better than ugly
4
Easy to learn and use
4
Easy to setup and run smooth
4
Simple and easy to learn
4
Multiple Inheritence
4
CG industry needs
3
List comprehensions
3
Powerful language for AI
3
Flexible and easy
3
It is Very easy , simple and will you be love programmi
3
Many types of collections
3
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a g
3
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad id
3
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules
3
Pip install everything
3
No cruft
3
Generators
3
Import this
2
Can understand easily who are new to programming
2
Securit
2
Should START with this but not STICK with This
2
A-to-Z
2
Because of Netflix
2
Only one way to do it
2
Better outcome
2
Good for hacking
2
Batteries included
2
Procedural programming
1
Sexy af
1
Automation friendly
1
Slow
1
Best friend for NLP
0
Powerful
0
Keep it simple
0
Ni

CONS OF PYTHON

53
Still divided between python 2 and python 3
28
Performance impact
26
Poor syntax for anonymous functions
22
GIL
19
Package management is a mess
14
Too imperative-oriented
12
Hard to understand
12
Dynamic typing
12
Very slow
8
Indentations matter a lot
8
Not everything is expression
7
Incredibly slow
7
Explicit self parameter in methods
6
Requires C functions for dynamic modules
6
Poor DSL capabilities
6
No anonymous functions
5
Fake object-oriented programming
5
Threading
5
The "lisp style" whitespaces
5
Official documentation is unclear.
5
Hard to obfuscate
5
Circular import
4
Lack of Syntax Sugar leads to "the pyramid of doom"
4
The benevolent-dictator-for-life quit
4
Not suitable for autocomplete
2
Meta classes
1
Training wheels (forced indentation)

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Node.js

192.9K

8.5K

A platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications

Stacks192.9K

Votes8.5K

PROS OF NODE.JS

1.4K
Npm
1.3K
Javascript
1.1K
Great libraries
1K
High-performance
805
Open source
487
Great for apis
477
Asynchronous
425
Great community
390
Great for realtime apps
296
Great for command line utilities
86
Websockets
84
Node Modules
69
Uber Simple
59
Great modularity
58
Allows us to reuse code in the frontend
42
Easy to start
35
Great for Data Streaming
32
Realtime
28
Awesome
25
Non blocking IO
18
Can be used as a proxy
17
High performance, open source, scalable
16
Non-blocking and modular
15
Easy and Fun
14
Easy and powerful
13
Future of BackEnd
13
Same lang as AngularJS
12
Fullstack
11
Fast
10
Scalability
10
Cross platform
9
Simple
8
Mean Stack
7
Great for webapps
7
Easy concurrency
6
Typescript
6
Fast, simple code and async
6
React
6
Friendly
5
Control everything
5
Its amazingly fast and scalable
5
Easy to use and fast and goes well with JSONdb's
5
Scalable
5
Great speed
5
Fast development
4
It's fast
4
Easy to use
4
Isomorphic coolness
3
Great community
3
Not Python
3
Sooper easy for the Backend connectivity
3
TypeScript Support
3
Blazing fast
3
Performant and fast prototyping
3
Easy to learn
3
Easy
3
Scales, fast, simple, great community, npm, express
3
One language, end-to-end
3
Less boilerplate code
2
Npm i ape-updating
2
Event Driven
2
Lovely
1
Creat for apis
0
Node

CONS OF NODE.JS

46
Bound to a single CPU
45
New framework every day
40
Lots of terrible examples on the internet
33
Asynchronous programming is the worst
24
Callback
19
Javascript
11
Dependency hell
11
Dependency based on GitHub
10
Low computational power
7
Very very Slow
7
Can block whole server easily
7
Callback functions may not fire on expected sequence
4
Breaking updates
4
Unstable
3
Unneeded over complication
3
No standard approach
1
Bad transitive dependency management
1
Can't read server session

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related Node.js posts

Anurag Maurya

SDET at Fincent · Mar 11, 2024 | 86 upvotes · 142.4K views

Shared insights

Needs advice on code coverage tool in Node.js/ExpressJS with External API Testing Framework

Hello community,

I have a web application with the backend developed using Node.js and Express.js. The backend server is in one directory, and I have a separate API testing framework, made using SuperTest, Mocha, and Chai, in another directory. The testing framework pings the API, retrieves responses, and performs validations.

I'm currently looking for a code coverage tool that can accurately measure the code coverage of my backend code when triggered by the API testing framework. I've tried using Istanbul and NYC with instrumented code, but the results are not as expected.

Could you please recommend a reliable code coverage tool or suggest an approach to effectively measure the code coverage of my Node.js/Express.js backend code in this setup?

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Feb 12, 2019 | 51 upvotes · 1.5M views

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Node.js

GraphQL

MongoDB

I just finished the very first version of my new hobby project: #MovieGeeks. It is a minimalist online movie catalog for you to save the movies you want to see and for rating the movies you already saw. This is just the beginning as I am planning to add more features on the lines of sharing and discovery

For the #BackEnd I decided to use Node.js , GraphQL and MongoDB:

Node.js has a huge community so it will always be a safe choice in terms of libraries and finding solutions to problems you may have
GraphQL because I needed to improve my skills with it and because I was never comfortable with the usual REST approach. I believe GraphQL is a better option as it feels more natural to write apis, it improves the development velocity, by definition it fixes the over-fetching and under-fetching problem that is so common on REST apis, and on top of that, the community is getting bigger and bigger.
MongoDB was my choice for the database as I already have a lot of experience working on it and because, despite of some bad reputation it has acquired in the last months, I still believe it is a powerful database for at least a very long list of use cases such as the one I needed for my website

MovieGeeks