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Trying Out Vi
2026-05-24
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The first text editor  I ever used over an ssh  connection was vi. I
was  using  it  to  write  C  programs  for  my  intro  to  computer
programming course at  the University of Windsor in Fall  of 2006. I
moved to emacs a  few years later, and there I  mostly stayed, but a
part of  me really  appreciates the simplicity  of having  your text
editor just edit text. In the sort  time since I wrote my last phlog
entry, my  work laptop has all-but  banned the use of  emacs because
it's  blocking all  connections to  the package  servers. It  got me
thinking  maybe  my  text  editing  story  was  getting  a  bit  too
complicated.

So, why not give vi a try  again? Not vim, mind you, but regular old
vi. nvi  in particular. It  comes stock  on my FreeBSD  machine, and
it's easy to install  on my Debian laptop. My config  file is just a
few  lines long,  and I've  already read  the man  page from  top to
bottom. We'll see how this experiment in simplicity goes.