I've been using screen for as long as I can remember.

My favourite use for it was to connect to ten machines I used to administer remotely. I'd have a window inside screen for each machine and would hop from one to another.

My other great use for screen was to connect to a remote machine, run screen on it and then start some long running process. I could then detach screen and logout from the machine and return to it hours or days later and reconnect to the screen session and continue from where I finished last time.

Running screen on a remote machine also protects you from sudden unexpected network outages because you can reconnect to the remote machine and then resume the interrupted session as if nothing happened.

What is the difference between 'detach' a screen and simply close the terminal? And imagin that you have two terminal windows open simultaneously, if you issue screen onboth of them and then closes them, and later open two new terminals, how do you pick which screen to reattach to with screen -R?

The screen man-page is not that clear...

Thanks