Comment by avadodin

8 hours ago

They are a bit out of fashion these days.

The main use-case was multiplexing terminals and, after tmux provided a solution that was usable by normal users, it seduced people away.

Also, mouse-first tiling was introduced on Windows so nowadays it is almost universal to have a degree of tiling.

They are nice for terminals and browsing properly-written web pages but for anything with an aspect ratio or a fixed size they are clumsy.

Modern tiling-wms often have a floating mode so the distinction is more keyboard-wm vs mouse-wm.

> The main use-case was multiplexing terminals and, after tmux provided a solution that was usable by normal users, it seduced people away.

Are you sure about this history? I'd always heard that GNU Screen had been popular for a while before tmux, and from double checking, Screen dates back to 1987, the same year that Windows 2.0 came out. tmux didn't come for another two decades.

  • You are right.

    Although I don't know about "popular".

    To clarify, my impression was that many people started using tmux around the time when it was introduced including a few who had been using screen before.