The Tao of tmux
$14.99
Minimum price
$19.99
Suggested price

The Tao of tmux

and Terminal Tricks

About the Book

The Tao of tmux has been newly edited, over 600 tweaks, 3 new sections and much more. Get the scoop!

Available on Leanpub, Amazon Kindle and for free on the web.

Add the book on twitter on @TheTaoOfTmux.

The Tao of tmux is an evolution of my feature introduction for new users written years ago. What can be said is since then, I've used tmux every day of my life on OS X, Linux and FreeBSD. That's locally and on remote machines I connect to via SSH. Oh, and even Windows 10 users can get a taste of it.

I first presented my original introduction to tmux at Software Freedom Day at Sun Yat-Sen University (中山大学) in 2013. It's after I coded tmuxp, my first python project designed to manage tmux sessions in convenient YAML and JSON configs. Since then, I've splintered tmuxp into libtmux, an object API build on top of tmux's well-designed CLI controls.

There is no one way to use tmux. It is designed to leave that control up to the user. You can use it purely to keep a process running in the background to resume it another time. You can use it to split one screen into multiple terminals, copy and paste between them, resize them. You can make it part of your daily life, or you can just keep it in your tool belt for a rainy day. There's no one true way, but there is a Tao, and you have to journey to find it yourself. To do that, you have to try.

And you don't need this book to do it. The tmux manual is great. Google is great. Other books are out there. My original overview of tmux is still available free. But I wanted to take a chance to do it my way and to have it available to the world.

About the Author

Table of Contents

  • Foreword
    • About this book
    • Styles
    • How this book is structured
    • Donations
    • Formats
    • Errata
    • Thanks
    • Book Updates and tmux changes
  • 1. Thinking in tmux
    • Window manager for the terminal
    • Multitasking
    • Keep your applications running in the background
    • Powerful combos
    • Summary
  • 2. Terminal fundamentals
    • POSIX standards
    • Terminal interface
    • Terminal emulators
    • Shell languages
    • Shell interpreters (Shells)
    • Summary
  • 3. Practical usage
    • The prefix key
    • Session persistence and the server model
    • It’s all commands
    • Summary
  • 4. Server
    • What? tmux is a server?
    • Zero config needed
    • Stayin’ alive
    • Servers hold sessions
    • How servers are “named”
    • Clients
    • Clipboard
    • Summary
  • 5. Sessions
    • Creating a session
    • Switching sessions within tmux
    • Naming sessions
    • Does my session exist?
    • Summary
  • 6. Windows
    • Creating windows
    • Naming windows
    • Traversing windows
    • Moving windows
    • Layouts
    • Closing windows
    • Summary
  • 7. Panes
    • Creating new panes
    • Traversing Panes
    • Zoom in
    • Resizing panes
    • Outputting pane to a file
    • Summary
  • 8. Configuration
    • Reloading configuration
    • How configs work
    • Server options
    • Session options
    • Window options
    • Keybindings
  • 9. Status bar and styling
    • Window status symbols
    • Date and time
    • Shell command output
    • Styling
    • Styling while using tmux
    • Toggling status line
    • Example: Default config
    • Example: Dressed up
    • Example: Powerline
    • Summary
  • 10. Scripting tmux
    • Aliases
    • Pattern matching
    • Targets
    • Formats
    • Controlling tmux
    • Capturing pane content
    • Summary
  • 11. Tips and tricks
    • Read the tmux manual in style
    • Log tailing
    • File watching
    • Session Managers
    • More code and examples
    • tmux-plugins and tpm
  • 12. Takeaway
  • Appendix: Cheatsheets
    • Commands
    • Keybindings
    • Formats
  • Appendix: Installing tmux
    • macOS / OS X
    • Linux
    • BSD
    • Windows 10
  • Appendix: tmux on Windows 10
  • Appendix: Troubleshooting
    • E353: Nothing in register * when pasting on vim
    • tmuxp: command not found and powerline: command not found

The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee

Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.

Now, this is technically risky for us, since you'll have the book or course files either way. But we're so confident in our products and services, and in our authors and readers, that we're happy to offer a full money back guarantee for everything we sell.

You can only find out how good something is by trying it, and because of our 100% money back guarantee there's literally no risk to do so!

So, there's no reason not to click the Add to Cart button, is there?

See full terms...

80% Royalties. Earn $16 on a $20 book.

We pay 80% royalties. That's not a typo: you earn $16 on a $20 sale. If we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book or course for $20, you'll earn $80,000.

(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)

In fact, authors have earnedover $13 millionwriting, publishing and selling on Leanpub.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub

Free Updates. DRM Free.

If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).

Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.

Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.

Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them

Write and Publish on Leanpub

You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!

Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.

Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub