GNU Screen, Window Manager.

June 26, 2010 at 7:54 am

GUI is for the weak. Meet my window manager, GNU screen:

Small image of GNU screen setup

0. Build screen from source to fix the slowdown when scrolling in a vertical split.

1. This is my .screenrc with keyboard shortcuts and a nifty status bar.  –help?

Control + Up:  previous split screen
Control + Down: next split screen
Control + Left:  previous screen window
Control + Right: next screen window
F1: kill current tab
F2: write paste buffer to file
F3: split horizontally
F4: split vertically
F5: remove single split
F6: remove all splits
F7: urlview pulls URL's from your current output, very useful
F8: new tab
F9: resize split +1 line
F10: resize split -1 line

2. Install screen_ssh.sh so your window title automatically renames to your ssh destination.  To have the title revert after closing your shell follow this.

3. color = readability.  Install color wrapper to colorize your terminal output.  Alias man to use most as its pager.  Use the following for a colorful prompt with $? in $2:

00:43:18 0 user@hostname:~/$

\[\033[1;36m\]\t\[\033[0m\] `LastExitValue=$?; if [ $LastExitValue = 0 ]; then echo \[\033[1\;32m\]$LastExitValue\[\033[0m\]; else echo \[\033[1\;31m\]$LastExitValue\[\033[0m\]; fi` \[\033[1;34m\]\u@\h\[\033[0m\]:\[\033[1;33m\]\w\[\033[0m\]\[\033[1;32m\]\$\[\033[0m\]

To remove color use:  s/\x1B\[([0-9]{1,2}(;[0-9]{1,2})?)?[m|K]//g

4. Yakuake is the best terminal emulator. Configure these shortcuts:

Shift + Left: previous shell
Shift + Right: next shell
F11: full screen
F12: drop down