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    Not just back in the day. I run most of my large jobs on a server cluster that I ssh into. If I didn't use nohup, I'd need to leave my laptop connected to those machines for days while waiting for the jobs to finish. Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 18:14
  • @Ray what about running them via "at" or as cron jobs? Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 18:46
  • @RonJohn Sure. Or via a grid engine. I didn't mean to suggest nohup was the only option, just that it is still used for this purpose today. Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 19:38
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    Maybe your historical remarks are correct. But your conclusions about its present importance are wrong. It is not useful on slow computers but it is useful for long running jobs. These are two different things. You use use 'nohup' to protect your job against the intended or unintended disconnection of your terminal. Even nowadays you are not happy if a jobs aborts because a network error disconnects your terminal and your job is aborted. Commented Jan 14, 2018 at 10:49
  • @Ray Cron jobs are completely inappropriate to achieve this. Cronjobs are for periodic tasks, you have to set the environment in the cronjob and consider lot of other things. Maybe 'at' is a little bit easier to handle but nevertheless more complex than nohup. Commented Jan 14, 2018 at 10:50