I Found Out Way Too Late That screen Is “Vintage” in RHEL 8… and I Survived to Tell the Tale

 Recently, I needed to run some commands in the background and, like a true terminal veteran, I thought: “Perfect, I’ll just use screen.” Ah, the innocence. 😅

Turns out, on RHEL 8, screen is basically ancient, because according to Red Hat, it “uses obsolete code.” Of course! And I’m only finding this out now, when I actually need it? Perfect timing, as always.

After reading it in a RedHat KN, I couldn't believe it.

I reminded myself  tmux. And honestly… it’s not bad at all. Even has more tricks than screen.

Here’s a mini tutorial to get you out of trouble:

Install tmux

dnf install tmux

Create a new session

tmux new -s my_session

• my_session → session name

Detach while keeping everything running

Ctrl + b  →  d

Reattach to a session

tmux ls
tmux attach -t my_session

Run a command directly in the background

tmux new -d -s my_session 'my_command'

Useful commands inside tmux

• Create a new window: Ctrl + b → c

• Switch window: Ctrl + b → n (next) / p (previous)

• Close window: exit or Ctrl + d

💡 Tip: If you were using screen -S name -d -m command, in tmux it’s:

tmux new -d -s name 'command'

Pretty much the same, but without feeling like you’re using a digital fossil.

---

Moral of the story: sometimes technology evolves faster than our sysadmin ego. And yes, laughing at yourself is mandatory when you realize your beloved screen is “retro” and the modern world answers to tmux. 😂