• rayon@lemm.ee
    1025·
    1 year ago

    I think most people (including myself) prefer a minimal desktop by default, and then proceed to install only the software they need. Nevertheless, it always surprises me when I log in to a system that doesn’t have vim.

    • SSUPII@sopuli.xyz
      703·
      1 year ago

      For almost all users, especially beginners, nano is just simpler faster and better. A lot of distributions are bundling it, and I am finding indeed systems without vim at all.

    • s20@lemmy.ml
      252·
      1 year ago

      I disagree. Don’t get me wrong, vim is amazing and all that, but I think nano is easier for new users to grok out of the box, making it a better choice most of the time. What it lacks in features it makes up for in transparency.

      100% agree about the minimal set of desktop apps, though. That drives me crazy.

      Just my 0.02$.

      Edit: silly mistakes and clarification

      • Fedora@lemmy.haigner.meEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        You’ve never used a minimal Linux distro for cloud servers then. Some don’t ship any text editors. Others ship only nano. Part of the reason why I think learn vim because vi(m) is everywhere argument is retarded. It’s factually incorrect.

      • duncesplayed@lemmy.oneEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        It was, but it was (and still is) a Unix tool. I believe POSIX still requires that more be provided (even if it’s just less secretly).

        The original Unix more could only go forwards. Someone wanted to make something like more that could go both forwards and backwards, so he called it less as a joke (because “less” is a “backwards more”). For the past 40 years, everyone’s realized that less is much better than the original more, so nobody uses the original any more.

        (MSDOS took the idea of “more” before “less” caught on).

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Also, sometimes they have an old version of less. There was a change in the past, I don’t know, five or so years that made the “exit if less than one page” flag behave better. I don’t remember the specifics but it made using it as a fit pager way better. It used to be that it was difficult to have it act like cat when the output was less than a page. But newer versions support it.

      • Efwis@lemmy.zipEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Ubuntu wants you to use snap for all your app needs. I think their plan is to make repos only for os maintenance and installation and nothing else.

    • Nick@feddit.uk
      35·
      1 year ago

      What’s the point to install htop when top is being preinstalled like 99% of time?

    • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
      151·
      1 year ago

      Which distro doesn’t ship nano? I’ve only ever seen this in embedded or docker contexts.

      Condolences for your vile experiences, though.

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I remember using nano in college when I was a baby dev. I would write everything locally then paste into nano. I don’t remember if the professor gave us an FTP link or if I was just trying around but I pasted the server address into the file explorer (I think nautilus, I don’t remember) and it managed to connect. It made it all so easy.

      Good times, writing assembly in nano lmao!

      • vsis@feddit.clEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        by default?

        My work laptop came with Ubuntu preinstaled and didn’t have tmux nor htop.

        Vim is not present by default in at least debian and arch. Although vi is present in every distribution I believe.

        • JWBananas@startrek.websiteEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I can see that being the case for the Desktop variant. For the Server variant you get vim and tmux out of the box.

  • Swiggles@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    272·
    1 year ago

    I am surprised that vi is often available, but not vim. It’s really annoying on many RHEL based distros, because I am so used to typing vim. Otherwise there is just git I deem essential.

    • quat@lemmy.sdfeu.org
      32·
      1 year ago

      Nowadays vi is just a symlink to vim.tiny, so you’re actually running vim (in vi mode).

      • Swiggles@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        1·
        1 year ago

        No. If you have vim installed that’s true on many (some?) systems. As I said some distros have vi available, but not vim which is the annoying part.

        • quat@lemmy.sdfeu.org
          3·
          1 year ago

          The original vi has not been maintained for many years. Most distributions, including Debian, Fedora, etc, use a version of Vim which (mostly) is similar to how Vi was.

          From Fedoras wiki:
          “On Fedora, Vim (specifically the vim-minimal package) is also used to provide /bin/vi. This vi command provides no syntax highlighting for opened files, by default, just like the original vi editor. The vim-minimal package comes pre-installed on Fedora.”

          From the vim-tiny package description on Debian:
          “This package contains a minimal version of Vim compiled with no GUI and a small subset of features. This package’s sole purpose is to provide the vi binary for base installations.”

          • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            R.I.P. Bram Moolenaar. You made me think of it when you said go is unmaintained. I went to vim.org to see who is taking over vim but the security certificate is expired.

            It reminded me of this grim realization I had in my grandparents house. They were getting old, I think one or maybe both were in a nursing home by then. The house was falling apart as they were. I was going up the deck stairs and a stair broke under my foot, luckily one of the very low ones. Some dishes had some mold on them in the cabinet. And now going to vim.org, the cert is broken.

          • Swiggles@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            1·
            1 year ago

            You are actually correct. I just checked the manifest of RHEL and it provides vim-minimal and not vi like I assumed.

            I noticed that it behaves a bit different than the version available on AIX for example which for sure uses real vi, but I never gave it a second thought. Interesting.

            • quat@lemmy.sdfeu.org
              1·
              1 year ago

              Also OpenBSD use different versions, I’m guessing their vi is the original since it can’t handle utf-8. And iirc ex(1) is also a vim variant on Linux. I’ve never met anyone who actually uses ex though. ed(1) I think is just GNU ed. I am not certain about these versions though.

    • Ecology8622@lemmy.mlEnglish
      28·
      1 year ago

      Solution - learn using vi. You already did most of the work by learmjng vim.

      • Swiggles@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        10·
        1 year ago

        There is not really anything to learn. It is just lacking some useful features and shortcuts which make it slower to use. It’s still much better than nothing.

        Usually my biggest issue is that I am so used to write vim over vi. At least for small edits.

    • inetknght@lemmy.ml
      4·
      1 year ago

      Add tmux and you’ve got almost everything I install on a fresh install of any distro.

      Almost everything. The last thing is vim.