RE: screen

["Harig, Mark" <maharig at idirect dot net>]

> Gary R. Van Sickle wrote:
> 
> >Could somebody *please* explain to me why screen is in any 
> way useful on a
> >system with even a semblance of a window manager?

1. It is useful when the underlying operating system (say, Linux)
   is more stable than the client operating system (in this case,
   one of the Windows variants).  Using screen, you can connect
   to multiple servers, have long-lived sessions (weeks), without
   concern that your session will be terminated when your Windows
   client computer freezes or needs to be rebooted because of an
   upgrade.  This is another way of saying what Lapo Luchini said,
   I think.

2. It allows you to create a complex session with multiple screens
   attached to muliple servers at your favorite computer,
   disconnect your session from that computer, get up and walk
   across the office, and reconnect to your session at someone
   else's computer.

3. If you have an ssh server running somewhere in your network
   that allows external connections then you can repeat step 2
   from anywhere in the world that has internet access.

4. Even if you forget to disconnect (say, when you leave work or
   when you leave home and return to work), you can list your
   screen sessions after connecting remotely or locally, and
   disconnect that session from the other location and connect
   to it from your new location.

5. Although I haven't had occasion to use it, screen has the
   ability to allow collaborative work, i.e., multiple people
   at different locations in an office or around the world could
   connect to a single screen.

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