[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Why colour support. As a tmux user, I never use it. It's utterly wasted. But seriously, here is one option.

Tmux is a BSD project. On NetBSD, it replaced window(1), which was quite basic and did not have GNU screen or tmux bells and whistles. Thus, to avoid such features, one could use window:

https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/distfiles/window-20120215....

Linux users can use pkgsrc to compile it.

The expression "doesn't try to reinvent" may suggest that the desired alternative needs to have been written after tmux, not before. If so, then window will not qualify. It dates back to the 1990s, at least.

Footnote - I admire the minimalism sought here. I consider myself somewhat of a minimalist and the size of tmux has never bothered me. Looking at the source, it is relatively easy to remove features. I have not used a mouse on computers I own for over 20 years. There are many tmux features I do not use. Still, I have not felt the urge to remove them. I use a statically-linked tmux with a few customisations that weighs in at 1.2M. That is smaller than the statically-linked text-only browser I use which comes in at 1.3M. But perhaps I will try to trim down tmux as an experiment if these unused features are in fact taking up significant space.