this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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Agh! I just today switched from Zellij to Byobu.
It was for the cool system monitor status bar. And drag-resize panes.
But you can win me back with floating panes that don't disappear when I click on panes behind them! And a way to detach ghost sessions.
Multi-modifier keyboard shortcuts would go a long way too. I should have checked the changelog before starting to write this post.
There's a lot that I really like about Zellij. Session focus indicators, stylish border characters, panes and tabs. It's very classy.
This may not be the place but would you mind sharing how they compare in your opinion ?
Zellij and Byobu? Byobu is less pretty but more functional, probably because it's a front-end for existing mature technologies (screen/tmux). I've seen it described as more or less just a list of presets for tmux, so presumably you could get the same effect by spending a few hours customizing base tmux.
Zellij feels new and hip (special fonts for pretty borders and buttons) but some aspects don't feel quite finished (like how it's missing multiple modifier keys to avoid keyboard shortcut collisions, how it's not in major distribution repositories, no drag-resize panes (that I've found, at least)). It feels inevitable that Zellij is going to overtake the incumbent multiplexers and soon but for the moment I just really wanted that system monitor status bar.
Both have panes, tabs, sessions, degrees of gpm functionality. Zellij has the other-user-focus indicator, Byobu has the status bar and renamable tabs. Byobu will automatically reattach if a session is found, Zellij needs a few lines in .bashrc first. Both can save and load layouts but Zellij needs you to write the layout to a kdl file somewhere while Byobu can do it with one keypress (not sure if that survives across sessions though). I get the impression that permanent config in Zellij requires more manual config file manipulation, which isn't necessarily a negative, but feels more like having to learn a new programming language for something you'll set up once and then immediately forget about.
Both have more pros than cons and I'm sure I'll continue bouncing back and forth as I refine my understanding and opinions.
A quick thought experiment for how I think Zellij could close the distance:
Preset layouts, or community layouts that are easily shared
Live system resource monitor status bar (I spent weirdly long looking for a single-row live terminal resource monitor that I could just set up in its own pane and just couldn't find one)
Of course, being able to bind multiple hotkey modifiers, though I've read on the github issue that that's not necessarily a trivial feature)
More mouse functionality (though I might be in the minority there, haha)
Maybe a TUI interface for setting config items
Looking at this list, it's really just a bunch of things that would suit my own personal workflow, haha.
Wow, thank you so much for the very thorough answer! I've been interested in both and having the point of view of someone who has experienced both is extremely useful. I appreciate it a lot.
Try them both! Let me know if you have a different experience.
Hopefully i can grab some time to take both for a spin soon!
So I've tried them both, since you re-inspired me to do so the other day, and I have to say I'm very impressed with Zellij so far. I understand it's still an ongoing project that will need a lot of polish, but so far feels like it has a philosophy that I can actually meaningfully integrate in my workflow, especially custom layouts. I still have a lot to learn about it to have areally good idea fo how that would work out though, but I can already see myself usign it in projects I have in mind and the documentation is really thorough. ^^
Byobu, on the other hand, oof. That was not a welcoming experience. I had to read the man pages to get a decent idea about how it works in general, because the pretentious video tutorial on their website was a disaster. None of the shortcuts I tried from what they were showing did what they were supposed to do. Configuration issue, most likely, but I'm not going to dive head first into config files so I can try it out properly. That was very, very weird.
Thanks again for your insight and motivating me to give them a go!
That's good to hear!
I just tried Byobu in Konsole on Plasma 6, and it did not go well, so I can definitely see why your impression wouldn't be great.
I've not watched their videos, and originally found it really easy to work through the keyboard shortcuts, but some combination of KDE and Konsole just eats up all the key combinations. If this was my first experience, I would have bounced off immediately.
That tracks, I also happen to be on Konsole and Plasma 6! That explains things!
About the video, it's a wordless demonstration with minimal in-terminal narration and ... Mozart as the soundtrack for some reason? The whole thing along with the manpages-only doc did give me newbie-hostile, elitist vibes which were a stark contrast with zellij's "look at all the cool things I can do!", friendly approach.
Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate well written manpages, goodness knows they're often written as an afterthought, but zellij's documentation is just amazing at getting you started and understand the philosophy with a super hands-on approach. Honestly, kudos to them.
divulgâche
I'm more of a Vivaldi kinda gal anyway lol :V