[ymse]

Why don't you just change the prefix key instead?

  unbind C-b
  set -g prefix C-a
  bind-key C-a send-prefix

I use C-z FWIW.

[cm3]

Nice, that seems to work. Is there a downside to using this?

I had to still explicitly add `bind-key C-a previous-window` to emulate screen's `C-a a` to switch between last windows.

[ymse]

The above is how most people first configure tmux, since C-b is just awkward. `bind-key C-a send-prefix` is optional of course, but is used to forward C-a to the active window (beginning-of-line in shell and emacs). How would you do that in screen?

The default for `previous-window` is `prefix-p`. Run `tmux list-keys` to see all active bindings.

[lewiseason]

The only real downsites are if you use screen/minicom/etc inside tmux you tend to mash Ctrl-a quite a lot, but if anything that's easier than keeping track of which key goes with which level?