Here's a few of my personal thoughts on the matter.
Benefits of using screen:
* It allows me to pause what I'm doing and come in to work and pick up
where I left off.
* It allows you to have multiple connections over the same secure link --
I can SSH through multiple machines to get to my destination, then run
Screen there and have immediate access to more sessions.
* It allows you to do multiple things when connected via a serial (direct
or modem (think BBS, not PPP)) connection. -- In a server environment
you may be using a serial console.
* Provides a uniform way for me to have one big terminal window instead of
lots of small terminal windows. (Tabs don't work the same in different
applications that support them.) -- I do this on my laptop, when it is
on my lap and I expect to be leaning back on my recliner/couch/whatever.
* Provides a uniform way for me to monitor an application for change.
(Some, but very few, GUI terminal applications support this.) I use this
when I work from home (on my laptop) to monitor the work-related IRC
channel for chatter. (At work, I just use two large monitors.)
* Provides a uniform way to switch to specific screens using key-bindings.
While this is supported in most tab-based GUI terminal emulators, the
key bindings vary.
Old school benefits of using screen:
* Reduced traffic from server to client as opposed to multiple direct
connections (useful with PPP/SLIP over a standard modem)
* Text-mode web-browsing with Screen and multiple text-based web-browsers
(such as Lynx, w3m, Links, etc.) is zippy even over slow connections.
Research and even downloads would regularly go fast enough that I kept
busy.
* Screen allows dedicated dumb terminals to virtually support multiple
connections to the same host. (While most people think "dumb terminal"
is only equal to vt100's and the like, it also applies to Apple ]['s
connected to an external modem logged in to a shell account.)
Arguments against using screen:
* Scroll-back doesn't work as expected.
* Control-A is over-loaded. This effects EMACS key-bindings. (This can be
seen in every GNU Read-line-based application, such as BASH.) GNU Readline
supports VI-like keybindings using "set editing-mode vi" in your .inputrc,
and GNU Screen supports changing the escape key with the -e command-line
argument or the "escape" command in your .screenrc.
* If you use EMACS, you can consider it superfluous. You may do better to
learn the EMACS method, rather than using Screen.
* If you only ever use your own accounts on your own machines, you may have
things configured so that you don't need Screen.
Cheers,
Steven Black
On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 11:21:01AM +0000, Mark Krenz wrote:
>
> Alright. I can give the a presentation at the next meeting or if that
> it taken then the one after that. screen might only take about 30
> minutes to go over so I can also show the power of vim (vi) in another 30-45
> minutes.
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