Question

I’ve just introduced a friend to GNU Screen and they’re having a hard time getting used to it. That makes me think about the essential things he needs to know about the excellent Screen utility, the same things that you’d think worthwhile to teach someone, a beginner, from the ground up. What are some analogies and handy tips for remembering binds, etc.?

It would be awesome.

Answer 1

I’ve been using Screen for over 10 years and probably use less than half the features. So it’s definitely not necessary to learn all its features right away (and I wouldn’t recommend trying). My day-to-day commands are:

^A ^W - window list, where am I ^A ^C - create new window ^A space - next window ^A p - previous window ^A ^A - switch to previous screen (toggle) ^A [0-9] - go to window [0-9] ^A esc - copy mode, which I use for scrollback 

I think that’s it. I sometimes use the split screen features, but certainly not daily. The other tip is if screen seems to have locked up because you hit some random key combination by accident, do both ^Q and ^A ^Q to try to unlock it.