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essephyesterday at 4:05 PM1 replyview on HN

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.


Replies

teddyhyesterday at 8:10 PM

> 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...>

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