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EPendragon commented on Customizing tmux   evgeniipendragon.com/post... · Posted by u/EPendragon
akkartik · 24 days ago
> Vim's hjkl make sense as you start using the tool. tmux's Ctrl-B for a prefix doesn't make sense, so that leads to remapping.

Hmm, I'm still confused:

* How do Vim's hjkl start to make sense? They've always seemed arbitrary. 'l' should stand for 'left', but it takes me right!

* How is a different keyboard shortcut less confusing than ctrl-b. They all seem arbitrary. You remapped it to ctrl-a. Maybe you were used to GNU Screen?

EPendragon · 23 days ago
hjkl are where your fingers land and supposed to stay on keyboard (well almost). This puts you in a position to use the rest of the keyboard fast.

Ctrl-B is a mechanically more difficult key binding than Ctrl-A.

EPendragon commented on Customizing tmux   evgeniipendragon.com/post... · Posted by u/EPendragon
mrweasel · 24 days ago
The git repo idea is fine for some machines, but when I log into a random customers server at 4:00AM to fix some issue that paged me, I'm not spending time cloning a repo to setup neither vim nor tmux, it just has to work.

Also the machine may not actually able to reach out onto the wider internet.

EPendragon · 23 days ago
I think it depends on the use case. If I had to do what you do with random machines, I would probably need to be familiar with default tool setups as well
EPendragon commented on Customizing tmux   evgeniipendragon.com/post... · Posted by u/EPendragon
burnt-resistor · 24 days ago
LazyVim helped save me time configuring nvim for a broad range of integrations.

It's modular and customizable.

EPendragon · 24 days ago
I tried LazyVim a couple of times, but felt that I would rather go back to a simpler nvim setup, and then build it up myself and learn as I go. I have stuck and enjoyed kickstart.nvim: https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim

It has been my starting point, and I have gradually been adding new plugins and reconfiguring existing ones.

EPendragon commented on Customizing tmux   evgeniipendragon.com/post... · Posted by u/EPendragon
ascorbic · 24 days ago
Have you used iTerm's built-in tmux integration? It's a while since I used it because I don't do development on a remote machine anymore, but I liked the way it mapped tmux tabs and panes to native iTerm ones
EPendragon · 24 days ago
I will need to try iTerm's tools to see if I can do all of the same flow. Is it scriptable and does it have the same persistence features?
EPendragon commented on Customizing tmux   evgeniipendragon.com/post... · Posted by u/EPendragon
Jedd · 24 days ago
I tend to use byobu as a wrapper around tmux wherever possible - this combination might have gotten the author close enough to where they wanted to be.

Well, they'd still need to bring their own ascii teacup.

https://www.byobu.org/

EPendragon · 24 days ago
I will check this out. Thanks for the link!
EPendragon commented on Customizing tmux   evgeniipendragon.com/post... · Posted by u/EPendragon
glaucon · 24 days ago
"One of the things that stood out to me right away was how dreadful UI looked. Not only it felt uninviting, but it almost felt “gatekeepy” - if you don’t know how to use it in this configuration, then might as well forget about it."

I'm puzzled how we get from unintuitive interface to "gatekeepy" (which I'm assuming implies a deliberate attempt to make the set of users small). Things can be difficult to use without anyone setting out to exclude new users, some things _are_ difficult to use, and other things are written by people who haven't been paid to make them address the needs of a wider range of users than they want to.

EPendragon · 24 days ago
glaucon, I agree with you. Most of feeling of "gatekeepiness" came from being a novice at using tmux and having to get used to a new workflow. tmux is as gatekeepy as vim, or other complex cli tool is - if you have never used it in the past, you might find it to be a challenge. That was all I was trying to point out. It is an entry in a diary of a noob tmux user :D

u/EPendragon

KarmaCake day173June 6, 2025
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I enjoy developing software and exploring new tech.

Blog: https://evgeniipendragon.com/

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