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Comment by young_unixer | Hacker News Reader

I like the idea of using tmux, but the default keybindings are so awkward. Is there a good reason for the keybindings being that way?

(I don't want to use custom keybindings either, cause I don't like straying from the defaults.)

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It's just a different philosophy. Ctrl-b turns on tmux mode. The only tricky ones to remember are " to create a horizontal split and % to create a vertical one, but you can remember them based on where these keys split your keyboard (& splits the keyboard down the middle as if you make a verticle split in tmux, " rests along the middle row of the keyboard like a horizontal split). Arrow keys to move about the panes is pretty intuitive. The rest of the commands are easy enough to remember: c to create a new window, n to go to the next window, p to go to the previous window, x to close a pane, & to close the window and all panes.

That's about all you need to keep in your head to get a lot of power out of tmux.

Everybody I've talked to who uses tmux has switched away from the default keybindings. I agree on straying away from defaults for most things since using custom configs makes it more difficult to work on random servers down the line. But.. tmux is an exception to that rule, especially since it only needs to be configured on one host, and none of the servers you might need to ssh into.

Spend a couple hours some night editing someone else's public tmux config and it'll really pay off.

(FWIW, my capslock has been rebound to be ctrl, and I do ctrl-a as my tmux-mode key. Really recommend if you use a terminal a lot.)

Same here for ctrl-a when I tried tmux. After coming from using screen a fair bit it felt so much natural.

as a dvorak user with caps bound to ctrl, ctrl-b is a lot easier to do then ctrl-a

Personally I think the default keybindings make a lot more sense then the ones from screen. Specially jumping to the start of the line, in screen, Ctrl-a a ... common ;P

As with all software, if you are used to the setup of an alternative program, it takes time to retrain your musclememory.

IIRC, tmux was originally developed inside of screen, so ctrl+b was chosen so it wouldn't conflict with ctrl+a

If you struggle with keybindings, you should try _byobu_, it has much saner key setup and shorter learning curve.

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