Comment by esseph
1 day ago
If screen crashes you lose the sessions, Tmux maintains state.
Screen does not have UTF8 support, tmux does.
Otherwise just a bunch of more sane original defaults in tmux to make things much familiar.
In 2026 if given a choice between screen and tmux to use/learn, most are going to go with tmux.
> Screen does not have UTF8 support, tmux does.
“‘-U’
Run screen in UTF-8 mode. This option tells screen that your terminal sends and understands UTF-8 encoded characters. It also sets the default encoding for new windows to ‘utf8’.”
— <https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/screen.html#Invok...>
“Command: defutf8 state
(none) Same as the ‘utf8’ command except that the default setting for new windows is changed. Initial setting is on if screen was started with ‘-U’, otherwise off.”
— <https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/screen.html#Chara...>
Which does not work correctly for Korean, Japanese, Chinese, I think Thai, and a few more with somewhat ambiguous character widths.
This can lead to ghost characters that aren't shown, overlapping characters, etc.
It was an attempt to bolt on UTF8 support, but it's not great.