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Comment by desmap | Hacker News Reader

Just the combination of tmux and nvim with shared ctrl-hjkl between both nvim and tmux panes is so buttersmooth and no other setup has given me such an seamless interoperability between an editor and an OS. What this means: you can switch between tmux panes or nvim panes or from tmux to nvim and back always with the same shortcut. This is the most underrated killer feature.

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> is so buttersmooth and no other setup has given me such an seamless interoperability between an editor and an OS . . . This is the most underrated killer feature.

You've just described what it feels like to be an emacs user. It's all just text[0].

[0] - https://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3996068979/the-levels-of-e...

Does NeoVim support that out if the box? For regular Vim I'm using https://github.com/christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator.

I don't think so. I had to use that package too in neovim.

No, you need that plugin/script but installation and usage is rock-solid, I am using this now for years. FWIW, I also never use nvim's built-in terminal because this setup with tmux is so fast and feels super natural.

Hint: you have to redefine more of tmux' binds, the defaults are just not usable.

Hint2: most creation and resizing of panes and windows binds should be mapped without the tmux prefix, you can do this with "bind -n" in the .tmux.conf.

Hint3: read the tmux manual, it's really good and on one (long) page.

I am not sure if you tried i3 window manager. It provides similar features but with more freedom.

I posted in another comment more about my view on i3. However, compared to tmux it also lacks the capability to be used via ssh. At the end of the day there are not really comparable but yeah, I prefer to work with tmux+nvim on a *nix environment through ssh, all wrapped in a typical window manager such as Windows which handles stuff like hidpi, meta window management, device management etc. The good thing is that I am not stuck with Windows. You can give me any meta/desktop OS/window management such as any Linux wm or macos as long as I have tmux and nvim, my productivity will stay the same.

FWIW, while automatic tiling with i3 is super impressive, it's overrated. In the beginning you believe that this really boosts your productivity but you get quickly annoyed. If tmux is set-up right, so not just this seamless navigation but also creating and resizing of panes in a similar fashion with intuitive binds you wouldn't want any automatic tiling anymore. With my binds I am able to open and resize dozen of panes faster than I ever could with i3. And as a bonus tmux' config is just simple some remapping but never a rabbit hole to get basic things working.

That is why I prefer the static tiling approach compared to the common dynamic tiling window managers. The important difference is that a static window manager never reorders or resizes windows unless you tell it to, and this leads to the same flexibility but without being forced into a predetermined layout.

I like it a lot but it's rare, the only one I've used is stumpwm.

The disadvantage of that is that i3 is not aware of a window's contents. A terminal multiplexer however knows what the current working directory in each terminal pane is, and if you open a new split it can be automatically set to the same path. This makes the whole process a little bit smoother.

Yes! I do this and love it. Works locally or via SSH with no difference at all.

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