I love GNU screen and have used it for years. But, I have been told I need to start using tmux (it's GNU screen's newer better cousin). I recently had an excuse to explore it more at work. I needed to ssh into 8 boxes and tail a log file one each. I would like to, with one command line command, open a screen that is split into 8 split screens each ssh'n into its given box and tailing a file. I think tmux can do this, If GNU screen can do it in one command I don't know what that command would be?

Installing tmux in OS X

I have brew installed in OSX using this its easy to install tmux with the following command.

> brew install tmux

Then checking the version

> tmux -V

Which seems to be the latest according to http://tmux.sourceforge.net/ [1]

Installing tmux on Ubuntu 12.04

In Ubuntu run

> sudo apt-get install tmux

Then checking the version

> tmux -V

In Ubuntu 14.04 I get version 1.8

In Ubuntu 10.04 it seems to be version 1.1

I'd rather have version 1.9a on Ubuntu …

I'm going to give a shot at building it from the github repo code. https://github.com/ThomasAdam/tmux [2] is the official github repo. (I was unsure of this before but Thomas Adam posted a message on this page to correct me. Its good to know I can rely on the github being up to date)

First remove the current install

> sudo apt-get remove tmux

Then run the following (this worked for Ubuntu 14.04 but not 10.04)

> sudo apt-get install automake pkg-config libevent-dev ncurses-dev

> git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/tmux/tmux-code tmux

> cd tmux

> git checkout tags/1.9a

> sh autogen.sh

> ./configure --prefix=/usr

> make

> sudo make install

Check the tmux version

> tmux -V

Installing tmux on Ubuntu 10.04

It took a few tries but here's how I got tmux 1.9a to install on Ubuntu 10.04

First you need to install libevent manually http://jtskarbek.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/tmux-compile-failure/ [3]

> wget http://github.com/downloads/libevent/libevent/libevent-2.0.21-stable.tar.gz

> tar xf libevent-2.0.21-stable.tar.gz

> cd libevent-2.0.21-stable

> ./configure

> make

> sudo make install

Then run the following

> sudo apt-get install automake pkg-config ncurses-dev

> sudo apt-get install git-core

> git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/tmux/tmux-code tmux

> cd tmux

> git checkout tags/1.9a

> sh autogen.sh

> ./configure --prefix=/usr

> make

> sudo make install

Check the tmux version

> tmux -V

Installing tmux on Ubuntu 12.04

Run the following to install tmux 1.9a on Ubuntu 12.04

> sudo apt-get install automake pkg-config libevent-dev ncurses-dev build-essential libtool

> git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/tmux/tmux-code tmux

> cd tmux

> git checkout tags/1.9a

> sh autogen.sh

> ./configure --prefix=/usr

> make

> sudo make install

Check the tmux version

> tmux -V

Installing tmux on Cygwin

I found this site http://java.ociweb.com/mark/programming/tmuxInCygwin.html [4] detailing how to install tmux on cygwin. I used this site a lot in getting my install to work.

First run Cygwin setup. In my case setup-x86_64.exe

Make sure