Screen vs tmux

From WikiVS, the open comparison website

Both GNU Screen and tmux are terminal multiplexers designed for Unix-like platforms. In a sense, they may be thought of as window managers for a text console instead of the X Window System. Screen is easily the best-known terminal multiplexer, and because of this it tends to be the standard against which others are measured.

[edit] Licensing

As a GNU project, Screen is distributed under the terms of the GPL, while tmux is distributed under the terms of the BSD license.

[edit] Features

Multiplexing: Obviously, as terminal multiplexers, both Screen and tmux can manage multiple shell instances, or "windows", at the same time within a single session.
Persistence: Both GNU Screen and tmux allow the user to detach and reattach terminal sessions, leaving any shells and their subprocesses managed by the multiplexer while detached.
Shared Sessions: More than one user at a time can simultaneously connect to the same session in either Screen or tmux.

[edit] tmux only

The following features are specific to tmux, and not shared by GNU Screen.

Client/Server System: When the first tmux session is created, a server instance is started automatically, and the session runs as a client for that server. Further sessions operate as clients, connecting to the same server instance. The user can enter commands at any client to control the server instance, the current session, or any other client of the same server instance.

[edit] Interface

Whereas Screen uses Ctrl-A as its command prefix, interfering with the default command character in most shells for moving the cursor to the beginning of the line, the command prefix used by tmux is Ctrl-B, which interferes with the default command character in most shells for moving the cursor back one character without deleting. In case of a need to have standard shell behavior for Ctrl-A (in the case of Screen) or Ctrl-B (in the case of tmux), both applications can be configured to use a different command prefix.

[edit] Performance

Tmux was created to provide a simple, modern, lightweight, BSD-licensed alternative to GNU Screen. In general, the design goals for tmux ensure it is a relatively fast and lightweight application. The client/server architecture also ensures that resource usage increases for multiple sessions are minimized.