Getting 256 colors to work with byobu

Question

When I launch byobu, this always happens:

$ echo $TERM
screen

even if $TERM evaluates to xterm-256color outside of byobu.

How can I fix this?

Answer 1

Just set the default-terminal in profile.tmux:

$ echo 'set -g default-terminal "screen-256color"' >> ~/.byobu/profile.tmux

Answer 2

cd /usr/share/byobu/profiles
sudoedit tmux

Find this:

# Cannot use:
#  - screen-bce, screen-256color-bce: tmux does not support bce
#  - screen-256color: vim broken without -bce
set -g default-terminal "screen"

...and change that to this:

set -g default-terminal "screen-256color"

You might be able to achieve the same result for your own account only without sudo powers by adding this command to ~/.byobu/tmux but I have not tried this.