How to install GNU Screen on Linux

GNU Screen is a full-screen Window Manager that works with Serial Terminals as well. This makes GNU Screen a very useful tool to interact with Numato Lab’s USB GPIO/Relay modules and other products. Below is a screenshot of GNU Screen interacting with a USB GPIO module.

Numato USB GPIO With GNU creen

With most popular distributions, GNU Screen can be installed by using appropriate package managers. Below are the commands for RedHat/Debian based Linux distributions.

$ yum install screen
$ apt-get install screen

On Linux distributions where GNU Screen is not available through package managers, building GNU Screen manually is an option. The following commands will download GNU Screen Source and build. Make sure to change the url to match the specific version of GNU Screen.

# Download the source and extract

$ wget http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/screen.git/snapshot/v.4.3.1.tar.gz
$ tar -xvf v.4.3.1.tar.gz
$ cd v.4.3.1/src/

#Build GNU Screen

$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure
$ make

#Run GNU Screen. Replace /dev/ttyACM0 with appropriate device name.

$ sudo ./screen /dev/ttyACM0
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