GNU Screen -- The best thing since VNC?

I have recently found myself in a bit of a blunder. I found myself opening a VNC server (with vncserver) and then connecting to it just to open a bunch of xterm's, and this seemed wasteful to download pictures of a text-mode terminal. I also SSH in and run long-term tasks and want to disconnect--but don't want to use nohup because I might want to re-gain control of the program or just see in real-time what the output is.

Then I remembered I read the description of a software some time ago in pirut, and thought it was a great idea. This software, as I remember it, was much like what I've just found here, but it seems like this project is defunct. I know there was something which was its own daemon and allowed persistent sessions, but...

After a lot of Googling, I finally came accross GNU Screen. I find this software awesome! Basically, it's like a window manager for your Secure Shell, allowing multiple new shells to be opened and switched between, "screen splitting" so you can see two screens at once, persistence of your tasks--which was exactly what I was looking for, and other features like sharing the session between users. Now I can have my multiple terminals running on the remote machine and use them effectively and more efficiently than via VNC.

The Wikipedia article links to many good tutorials in its references section. I recommend you try a few of them, especially this one, but if you're like me--you need to know right away:

• install: yum install screen


• run: screen


• disconnect: CTRL+a d


• reconnect: screen -r -d

Disclaimer: Yes, VNC is newer than Screen. No, Screen is not convenient when you need to use GUI's since even if you get it to work, it's forwarding who X windows, which can be much too slow if you're connecting over WAN. VNC is definitely the way to go if you have GUI programs you want to use in conjunction with text-mode.

Happy screening!