shpool doesn't allow splitting screens either! But I guess in my head, screen is largely for resuming a shell connection on a remote host while tmux is a window splitter.
Let me rephrase that -- is it good enough to use 100% of the time you're in a terminal? Cause that's what I do with tmux and it works phenomenally. Haven't had a similarly good experience with screen before, but I'm open to being wrong.
I always get scared when I accidentally have two shell sessions visible at once in tmux. I immediately exit one. I suppose I should read a bit on it. When I want side to side comparisons I go to the shell running emacs and do it there (post vague because I never remember the different words for windows and panes and shells etc these different apps use.)
tmux has a server containing sessions containing windows containing panes. Screen has sessions, windows, and panes (which it calls regions).
I recently finally switched from screen to tmux and I found that it's pretty seamless (especially because I use vi keybinds in tmux still). Some machines at work don't have screen anymore.
Ok,makes sense. Using this terminology, I asked claude and found out how to move a shell from a standalone window to sharing 2 panes with another shell.
Incidentally, this "screen absent" is why you should always volunteer to help create base shells (programmatically via packer not by hand) - emacs and tmux are always there when I made the image.