Tmux is a terminal multiplexer that lets you have multiple virtual terminals and also split windows and have multiple panes and tabs. Another nice feature is if you are connecting over SSH and using Tmux, Tmux can keep your session going even if you disconnect and re-connect later.

In Debian, you can simple use the system package manager to install:

sudo apt install tmux
tmux -V  # Check version

To build from source, download sources from the Tmux GitHub Releases. Building is pretty simple, it has few dependencies and compiles quickly.

# Install buidl dependencies
sudo apt install libevent-dev ncurses-dev build-essential bison pkg-config
 
wget https://github.com/tmux/tmux/releases/download/3.1c/tmux-3.1c.tar.gz
tar -zxf tmux-3.1c.tar.gz
cd tmux-3.1c/
 
# Identify the options you want
./configure --help | less
./configure
make
./tmux -V
sudo make install  # Optional

To initialize a tmux session, simply invoke tmux.

tmux