Make Tmux the OS

Scott Jenson's talk on window management highlighted that Apple and Microsoft aren't likely to innovate much further in the desktop OS space. The speaker argues that the current desktop experience needs to evolve, as much of what we consider "how computers work" is a workaround for hardware limitations from the past. The main point is that we should rethink how the desktop should function, rather than accepting the current tradeoffs.

The presenter, who is not a UI/UX designer, proposes a solution called "tmux is the OS," which aims to bring the amazing experience of tmux to regular users. tmux offers features like scrollable, session-persisted, detachable, and task-oriented systems. The goal is to adapt these concepts for a normal user base.

The talk breaks down the problem into several key components:

1. Screen real estate constantly changes, going from laptop to desktop monitor and back multiple times a day.

2. People use windows differently, and modern OSes only optimize for one use case.

3. By 2026, most software will run in browser tabs, with web applications covering various use cases.

4. The concept of a filesystem is becoming weaker, with notes, texts, and team content living in application-specific databases.

5. Some problems have been addressed, but not for normal users.

The presenter cites a 1986 paper called "Rooms: the use of multiple virtual workspaces to reduce space contention in a window-based graphical user interface" by Henderson, Austin, and Stuart K. Card. This paper suggests a system where the screen RAM is like a page swapped out to disk, and windows are grouped in "sets" representing tasks.

The idea is to reduce "knowledge faulting" in users by preloading the next window set before they ask for it. This concept aligns with the modern approach of using browser tabs, where one window can appear in multiple photos, representing multiple instances of the same application.