Terminal Mosaic

What's better than one command line? Many command lines that never die. Take the terminal to new places with Zellij.

- BY MARCO FIORETTI

Many Linux users know the advantages of the command line and believe that packing multiple command lines in one window is even better. So-called terminal emulators such as Gnome Terminal, Konsole, or Terminator can host multiple command-line sessions inside separate panes or tabs, but they have some limits.

What if you need to perform mission-critical tasks on a remote computer that you cannot afford to restart from scratch if the connection is lost? Or what if you need to start a command-line process on your office or school computer but want to be able to leave it running on your desk and continue working in that same session whether you're home or traveling? Maybe even from someone else's computer? Zellij [1] is an interesting example of a class of applications called terminal multiplexers. Terminal multiplexers extend the terminal concept to address some of these more complex scenarios.

The most common way to use any terminal multiplexer is to install it on the remote machine you want to work on. Once you have done that, you can launch the multiplexer every time you log into the machine. That way, if the connection goes down for any reason, you can just log in again and tell the multiplexer to reattach you to the original session, which, you'll discover, it has kept running and waiting for your input.

Although Zellij excels at this type of remote work, many users also prefer too use it, or its also-powerful predecessor tmux [2] (see the "tmux" box) on their local machines, because they find that Zellij is lighter, more flexible, and better suited to handle multiple persistent work sessions than applications such as Konsole (Figure 1).