I love vim, but it wasn’t always like this. When I was a Linux newbie one of the things that irritated me most is that tutorials aimed at beginners told readers to use vim, without explaining how to maneuver it. People, if you write tutorials aimed at beginners please use nano, even if it’s not your preferred text editor.
i agree with your request. vim used to scare me first.
as a side note: one of the reasons I believe as to why vscode grew in popularity was due to it lowering the barrier to just open up the editor and use it right away(with plugin system and a nice GUI). it is something vim by default doesn’t do.
The first time I opened vim (it was probably just vi at the time) I couldn’t exit it and had to shut down the computer by holding down the power button (!) to regain control of the machine. It took a while before I tried it again. Ultimately nano felt like it was for kids and emacs felt like an even worse option than vi so I memorized a few sequences, eg :q!, :wq, how to enter the insert mode and how to exit it and simple edit commands like dd and x and this gave me enough proficiency to get by.
Most all the terminal commands require prior study before they become easy to use. Its because Unix was created by engineers rather than by ui/ux design professionals.
In Linux terminals, you probably could have pressed Alt+F2 or Ctrl+Alt+F2 (F2 could be other F-keys) and log in on a second terminal to recover (by reading the manual or killing it). Also, if bash already had job control back then Ctrl+Z would have suspended vi/vim to the background.
I’m writing this, so people try it and maybe remember it, if they get stuck in some program. Doesn’t have to be vi. Maybe you just launched a long dd command and don’t want to end it, but want to look something up. These hints may help then.
ci" means change inside “” ca" means change around “”
the " can be replaced with any of: ({[wspbt
For changing inside or around parentheses, curky brackets, square brackets, words, sentences, paragraphs, code blocks and HTML tags respectively.
So for example if you want to replace all parameters in a function call you just do ci(
But that’s not all, the c is one of the possible operators, but not the only one.
di{ deletes the content of a block ya[ copies the content of something inside square brackets g~iw swaps the case of a word guis makes a sentence lower case gUip makes a paragraph upper case
And the most useless one: g?at replaces the content of an HTML tag with its rot13
I’ve been away from Linux for about a decade. Currently setting up Docker, and struggling with subuid and subgid. I’ll get there eventually, but man, this shit has really changed since I’ve been gone. Loving the challenge though.
I plan to Continue Refusing To Daily Drive Linux again this year in my standard drive to push Linux, Linux Developers, Managers and Contributors to be more friendly for end users. You have to be better than Windows, and we know you people can achieve it if more can and do contribute. Make Contributing Easy and they will Contribute.
Maybe I’ll spin up a Matrix Homeserver with Beeper bridges to self-host that…if that becomes a necessity. Getting to know how to use and administrate Linux efficiently is always a good thing to learn, even if it’s not easy still, and even if the bad old days were even worse.
The Linux for Windows subsystem is a nice to have that makes learning a little less troublesome.
Set up a bunch of self hosted apps on my pi 4 (Nextcloud is erm, next) to completely end my reliance on public cloud.
Use the Grocy instance I already have on that pi to plan recipes and eat healthy (after gorging myself like a drunken pig between now and new year’s day.)
This weekend’s job though, set up a quick ‘n’ dirty torrent box/ NAS with an old laptop for festive movie watching before building a better solution out of an old desktop once I have the cash sometime around summer.
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