When I run a program on remote Linux server, I used to run it in background with nohup such as:

nohup my_app > log.txt &

It works well until some programs need user input from keyboard such as password. So I turn to GNU screen. It is a window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes with sockets. Now I can access the terminals remotely, just like the Microsoft Remote Desktop, but only much faster since all communications are in text format.

One of the drawbacks of Screen is that it is not so intuitive. For example, there is no status in default settings. So I switched to Byobu, an enhancement for the GNU Screen or tmux. A nice introduction of Byobu can be found here and command lists here.