For a while I was running (g)vim8 with the built in :terminal - but I had some character issues with meta mapping (so typing tings like ~ on my Norwegian keyboard layout was a chore). Qt neovim didn't have these issues, whatever caused them - but I also switched back to a tiling wm (i3) - and I'm not sure if screen in neovim term really is better than a neovim on one side and a terminal w tabs on the other.
What I will say is that vim8 has a "better" terminal out of the box than neovim (that realized the idea first) ;in vim switching out of insert mode is easy and allows real nice copy to buffer - say to copy from a repl, and switch windows to paste into a file.
The limit of one (two) x11 clipboards is a bit of a pain, but with setting the x clipboard to default copy/pasting between vim and the rest of the world becomes pretty painless.
Anyway - point being, vim/neovim has great support for managing terminals - but I'm not convinced it's a great idea.
I'm able to do all of these things too with my setup, although it's not vim driving my setup, it's tmux. Using just plain vim doesn't work for me.
> I usually work with three or for different files opened, some tucked away in a tab that I can quickly shift to when I need it. And when I need to get to my "wall o' terminals", I just switch to that workspace (gnome).
Most of the time, I have two files open too, sometimes three. I never use tabs for files though. If I need to work on multiple files, I have them all open in splits. Seems to work fine all the time. I use ctrlp to easily switch between buffers and files.
> Whenever I watch the local vim lady do her thing, it's an entirely different workflow. Grepping across files, then opening one in vim so it just kinda pops up in a new terminal window. Doing a thing there, then closing it to go work in a different vim window... Admirable memory map of the code base and confidence to just close the file and move on, but not for me.
Yeah, doesn't work for me either... My setup looks like this[1] most of the time, and I'm easily to add any and everything as I need it.
[1]: https://imgur.com/a/A9b3izE