I have been using GNU Screen – an awesome terminal multiplexer – casually for quite a while now, but never really customised it much, since I still use a fair bit of GUI applications, even if I do frequent the terminal a lot. Today however I bit the bullet and set up a Screen config, nothing fancy, just a set of terms initialised to stuff I often use with proper term titles (I know, how did I live without them… since I rarely turn off my computer it’s only an issue when I do, since otherwise my term stays on). For my reference, and in case someone finds it useful, here’s the contents of my ~/.screenrc file:

The ‘hardstatus’ details are based on this Red Hat zine article on GNU screen. I have yet to look up in the man page what exactly each formatting code/escape strings mean, all I know is it’s a decent set-up :P.

Of course, you’ll need the relevant programs installed if you use this as is – I just need my interpreter shells running to test snippets of code in different programming languages. You can also do stuff like set-up ssh sessions, send commands to running screens – almost collaborative – haven’t explored this much.