Do you use vim as your default text editor? If you do not, have you ever been in a situation you could do nothing but use vim?
For much, not for all.
System and user files are pretty close to one another in NixOS, so I use it for both. Sudoedit is set to vim, but I have a kitty and neovim (technically it’s nnot nvim, it’s nvf so I can config it in Nix instead of Lua) environment that tiles quite nicely and uses nonconflicting keymaps.
I use mod+hjkl for navigating my window manager, too, which has led to an interesting situation. Hyprland just migrated to Lua from Hyprscript, and Neovim uses a lot of Lua for inbuilt commands and stuff, so you’d think I’d be thrilled to write them both in the same language. Instead I just sigh at the greener grass because I already configured them both in Nix.
I do use Obsidian (with Vim binds, and monospace source mode as default for everything except tables) for my markdown viewer / primary notekeeping cloud sync, and Kate for previewing media that needs to be formatted right as a .doc or .pdf.
Some Obsidian notes are handled with Vim, actually. I have a script that sets up a new Zettelkasten note with automatic tags and opens it in Neovim, because I find it faster than Obsidian when I have a single thought and need to write it before it’s forgotten. Thanks ADHD. I write Zettelkasten like little scripts of code - unique, atomic, referencing and importing each other, with a unique version history, and Vim’s great at that.
Damn, that’s quite the detailed setup.
Yes. I also use vim here (in this Web textarea where I’m typing this answer) thanks to Tridactyl.
I used to use
neovimprimarily, but mostly use Kate now, as I’ve switched away from programming for the most part. I’ve had plenty of situations where the only text editor available isvi, and I’m able to get by no problem. I do usually prefernanooverviif it’s an option, though that may get me crucified lolD:
I only use vim when it’s the only option… so like 99.9% of the time 😞
I use nvim for editing, and started after needing to use vi on minimal servers, etc., and being annoyed at not having muscle memory
Wanted to, but lacked the motivation to learn it. Was stuck on one occasion without
nano, so I pulled up thevimcheat sheet on my phone.nanofor most editingvimdifffor comparing files (Ie.pacnewfiles)Yes! With a few plugins, of course. YouCompleteMe and fzf.vim are my favorites by far. I spend a lot of time on embedded Linux devices at work, so it’s pretty convenient to use the same editor on my laptop and on the target device.
Yes. I started using it years ago and have been unable to exit ever since.
But honestly related to your question, I started learning to use vim exactly because when I started to learn and use Linux I was often stuck in situations where that was the only thing available.
full vim. It always messes with my muscle memory when vim-tiny is installed as a replacement.
Not if I can help it.
Yes, has been for 8 years
In college, my advisor/boss was basically the emacs guy, so I picked up enough to do some basic text editing but didn’t go further because I didn’t feel like spending hours reading man pages.
Later I worked at a place where a shared computer only had vi, so same story. I learned about a half dozen commands and left it with that.
Then I went though a series of other editors and IDEs at different jobs, Notepad++, StyledEdit, CodeWarrior, CodeComposer, some weird proprietary Netbeans based thing, VS Code, etc. I still used vi for minor config editing on the occasional remote machine.
Then I got a job where I would be doing a ton of work on headless remotes, so I decided to get serious about learning something purely terminal based. I tried a couple of things, but ended up with Helix because:
- it runs pretty great on my 15 year old laptop
- the vi commands I remembered worked
- it has actual command discoverability out of the box
- I didn’t have to install 153 plugins and write a 2834 line config file to make it useful
Now I’m all helix all the time and really enjoying it.
You almost always have nano or pico available, so it’s really unlikely that you’d get stuck with nothing but vim, unless you just didn’t know that nano existed.
I’ve had a couple systems that started with nothing more than vi, but rather more that started with nano (don’t think I’ve come across any that started with vim) – that being said, I’ll tolerate vi long enough to get micro installed







