Byobu does not use 256 colors. Defaults to 8

[Nick B.]

When running byobu it sets $TERM to screen-bce which is only 8 colors

$ echo $TERM
screen-bce

$ tput colors
8

This breaks themes and other color output in ncurses based applications such as vim and mc.

I am using the screen backend but I have also tested the tmux backend with the same problem.

$ apt-cache policy byobu
byobu:
  Installed: 5.106-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 5.106-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 5.106-0ubuntu1 500
        500 http://mirror.us.leaseweb.net/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://mirror.us.leaseweb.net/ubuntu xenial/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     5.106-0ubuntu1~xenial 500
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/byobu/ppa/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/byobu/ppa/ubuntu xenial/main i386 Packages

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/byobu/+bug/908766 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/byobu/+bug/900309