Linux Terminal & Shell Tools
Shells, terminal emulators and terminal multiplexers, and how they differ.
Three different things are often called “the terminal”. A shell (such as Bash) reads and runs your commands. A terminal emulator is the window that displays the shell. A terminal multiplexer (such as tmux) runs several shells in one terminal and keeps them running after you disconnect.
Shells
Interprets what you type and runs commands and scripts.
Terminal emulators
Graphical apps that show a shell and handle text, colours and fonts.
Terminal multiplexers
Split a terminal into panes and keep sessions running after you disconnect.