I was talking with a sysadmin once who intentionally removed nano and emacs from any system he was granted access to. His explanation was “if they can’t use vim I don’t want them on my machines”
As a VIM user, I don’t want you using VIM on my system unless you know how to use it. I don’t want you borking fstab or the passwd file or some other important config because you don’t know how to quit without saving.
True fact. It’s one page of directions on the archwiki and the only place you have to deviate is in selecting bootloader and network. Not exactly a 5D rubix cube.
I find vim quicker and easier for quick edits too, mostly because I’ve not bothered to learn anything but vim since it’s on everything (except, for some odd reason, the default build of Gentoo)
Brilliant! I don’t entirely disagree with that. I had vim forced on me at my old job, including actual vi on some of the more ancient systems. I got so used to it that I don’t really know how to use nano and definitely not emacs.
I never understood what the big deal was. Write. Quit. If you can’t remember that ‘w’ means write and ‘q’ means quit, I don’t know how else to help. Add in some decent options in your vimrc and it is pretty comfortable. I am in no way some guru who knows every shortcut and fancy command out there, but I like using it and it is the first thing I install on a new system.
I am not one to judge what text editor, OS, phone, car, or computer you like. You do you. If I was a sysadmin that had to deal with people who really shouldn’t be on those systems and that was an easy way to discourage people from screwing with it, then hell yeah.
Knowing VIM does not make one a better sys-admin. You can be an idiot, and still know how to drive Vi/Vim. There is FAR FAR FAR more to managing an OS and than that. If you think requiring VIM is enough to keep unknowledgeable people away from servers, you are probably the one who shouldn’t be managing servers.
Here’s the one reason why I decided to learn Vim rather than emacs: You will find Vim installed somewhere on basically any Unix-like system running in the world. It’s the one I can virtually guarantee is there, as part of busybox if nothing else.
Except for Gentoo, for some odd reason they’ve never included it in the stage tarball so it always has to be installed manually
Which is even weirder when you realize it is included on the live install iso, so you’ll be using it up until you chroot and all of a sudden find it’s not available anymore
That’s a bit like…at one point during Linux Mint’s installation, it removes gparted. gparted is included in the Live environment, but not in the standard install.
Jesus, why can’t people just expose their drives to cosmic radiation and have it switch the bits in the file? So much time wasted writing useless editors.
For advanced text editing (and project management) though, I have to give a shout out to Obsidian MD (markdown) and whomever made the code plugin for it
Vim user here: Nano is a good text editor, takes a lot less training to pick up and use, and it’s surprisingly capable. If I’m teaching someone how to use the Linux terminal, I’m going to teach them Nano, because they already have enough to learn. Vim is a separate class all its own.
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