Am I the only one who runs more than one terminal at a time? What happens now is I start an xterm on monitor #1 and start byobu within that. Various windows (whatever you switch amongst on pressing F3 and F4) are started - eg one might be client code running, one might be server code, one might be a database server etc. But sometimes for example I want to look at the client code output and server output simultaneously. At that point I switch byobu to the client window, and start a new terminal on monitor #2 and tail logs or whatever is appropriate. It is an annoying pain that I can't just run byobu and switch as I see fit.
In any event this is a multi-year frustration for me. People keep coming with convoluted workarounds (pointing tmux to tmux as far as I can tell) which it then isn't possible to figure out how to apply to byobu. All the while I wonder why two xterms running next to each other would ever want to be in lockstep by default?
for i in 1 2 3 ; do xterm -e byobu & ; done
Ctrl-ALT-F2 would take a miracle to work. Shift does as you describe, but the net effect is still nowhere what is intended.
Also note I am the same user. The functionality I want is how byobu behaves with screen. eg you can start 3 xterms, in each one run byobu. And each one can jump around as they see fit all sharing the same screen session. No work, no fuss and exactly sane.
The tmux behaviour baffles me. I can't understand why anyone would want all their viewers to change in sync. Short of a classroom demo environment, it really doesn't make sense as a default.
I'd be delighted if by default byobu did whatever was needed to make tmux behave usefully.