vi or emacs?

emacs is so confusing and evil! Especially when it's not installed on Solaris by default. Am I the only one that hates emacs here? I need to know if I am required to know how to use emacs if I apply for a linux admin position. I am reading Your Unix: The Ultimate Guide 2nd edition book, and the emacs editor is not consistent across various UNIX/Linux platform, which turns me off. I am thinking about skipping that chapter for good since i can't follow the book examples but if I have to know it, then I will give it a read.

By the way, I am not talking about text editors outside of the terminal. So OpenOffice and other craps do not count.

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YuckTheFankees

VIM all the way!

Sett

Never used emacs, but this reminds me of a joke:

Q: How do you generate a random string? A: Put a fresh student in front of vi and tell him to quit

/offtopic

paul78

Oh wow. I am quite surprised to see the ratio of vi over emacs. Generally speaking, I prefer lightweight applications. But having used emacs for over 25 years, I just plain old prefer the flexibility of emacs.

Where else can you find an editor that can solve the Towers of Hanoi puzzle, provide psycho analysis, and implement a full IDE.

As the saying goes - Emacs is a great operating system that also lets you edit files.

Quantumstate

nano please.

undomiel

Eww to nano. Definitely vim for me, and I use gvim by default in Windows. I tried to give emacs a fair shot but I was already too corrupted by the vi way.

UnixGuy

If you want to work as a Linux/UNIX admin, knowing VI is a MUST, because in times of troubles and troubleshooting, VI editor is the only editor available to you (if you're booting in a single user-mode to bring the system up for example).

I see no need for Emacs unless you are a software developer, even then, chances are you will probably be using Java SDK or the likes.

Knowing VI editor is a must. You can't work with Linux/Unix if you don't know VI, it must be the first thing you learn

hiddenknight821

paul78 wrote: »

Where else can you find an editor that can solve the Towers of Hanoi puzzle, provide psycho analysis, and implement a full IDE.

Is it because of your sex life that you are going through all this?

^^ That wasn't from me, lol. ^^ It was the crazy doctor Eliza from the psychoanalysis. I didn't know all of those features exist in emacs, but I am still not convinced that emacs is more awesome than vi.

Looks like vi (vim) wins. Since I was surprised to see paul78 actually liked emacs, I decided to give the emacs chapter a read, and I have reached to a conclusion after finishing the chapter yesterday. emacs sucks! The simultaneous combination key sequences and the fact that it's not installed on most UNIX/Linux system by default are deal-breakers. I like how I don't have to move my fingers much from the home row with vi when navigating through the file. Hunting and pecking for the meta key, which is the escape key in my case, can be a real pain. If I had to keep up with emacs, then there is no doubt I would develop Carpal Tunnel syndrome.

Thank you everyone for your time sharing your opinions and the votes, of course. I really appreciate it.

JDMurray

I just switched from ed to ex. What's vi?

paul78

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

It was the crazy doctor Eliza from the psychoanalysis.

hey - that where I get all my advice and saves me a lot of money on medication.

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Since I was surprised to see paul78 actually liked emacs,

I actually like vi too. I use vi so I can improve my keyboard proficiency at the game of "hunt".

JDMurray wrote:

What's vi?

A fullscreen version of sed, I think

KenC

When I looked into what the recommended text editor was before I started to use it, responses similar to UnixGuy were common, so I figured why not go with that. At the end of the day, try a few out and you'll soon see which one you prefer (I'm sure you'd figure out the basics of the others you use less frequently should the need arise).

log32

definitely vi.

paul78

UnixGuy wrote: »

Knowing VI editor is a must. You can't work with Linux/Unix if you don't know VI, it must be the first thing you learn

Yeah - I agree with you and @KenC. That's why I always encourage emacs users to learn to use evil-mode in emacs.

For you emacs users out there - make sure that you know how to be evil here - Evil - Home - Open wiki - Gitorious

hiddenknight821

JDMurray wrote: »

I just switched from ed to ex. What's vi?

Apparently I'm too young, too late, and too lame to get this joke. After reading that ed was the first UNIX text editor when the assembly version of UNIX was still around, I finally got your joke!

This explains how sed filter command gets its name.

paul78 wrote: »

That's why I always encourage emacs users to learn to use evil-mode in emacs.

OH! You and your Escape Meta Alt Control Shift! That's a lot of shift to press, paul78!

MickQ

Vi.
But since Paul brought up programming...

paul78

@MickQ - ^That^ was hilarious.

@hiddenknight821 - btw - a bit of trivia - one of the reasons that I gravitated to emacs was because the early vi implementations that I had to use didn't support arrow-keys navigation. To move the cursor, you had to be in command-mode and use the 'vi keys'. There was no arrow key and delete-key support. Needing to press escape to move or delete a character used to drive me crazy. And if I was in command-mode and had to edit a character at the end-of-the-line - my biggest frustration was needing to remember to press 'a' instead of 'i'. I realize that vi has evolved but I was scarred by my experience

.

Admittedly though, I tend to still use vi to edit simple configuration files. But I still prefer emacs in general.

onesaint

Paul, the ADM3A keyboard got the better of you! There's all kinds of trivia in that kb (think ~ for home). I'm sure you know these origins, though.

I think the only reason I am a VI user as opposed to Emacs is due to the fact that I was trained on VI first. Emacs is super robust which makes it a very viable tool. I think if I were to use one of the "other" editors like gedit, nano, etc. it would be Emacs due to its capabilities. With study time being short these days, I don't suspect that will happen anytime soon though.

@JD vi will eat your ex and will hereby call it ":".:D

ADM3a-KB.jpg

shred805

vi till i die

JDMurray

onesaint wrote: »

@JD vi will eat your ex and will hereby call it ":".:D

I have long thought of the colon as the excrement operator.

varelg

Nano. Either one of those if it is on the objectives, otherwise...

haziz

paul78 wrote: »

@MickQ - ^That^ was hilarious.

@hiddenknight821 - btw - a bit of trivia - one of the reasons that I gravitated to emacs was because the early vi implementations that I had to use didn't support arrow-keys navigation. To move the cursor, you had to be in command-mode and use the 'vi keys'. There was no arrow key and delete-key support. Needing to press escape to move or delete a character used to drive me crazy. And if I was in command-mode and had to edit a character at the end-of-the-line - my biggest frustration was needing to remember to press 'a' instead of 'i'. I realize that vi has evolved but I was scarred by my experience .

Admittedly though, I tend to still use vi to edit simple configuration files. But I still prefer emacs in general.

You could also use Zile for quick and dirty config file editing if you feel emacs is too heavyweight for the job. Same Emacs interface and keybindings and the program is tiny (certainly much smaller than Vim).

haziz

paul78 wrote: »

@MickQ - ^That^ was hilarious.

@hiddenknight821 - btw - a bit of trivia - one of the reasons that I gravitated to emacs was because the early vi implementations that I had to use didn't support arrow-keys navigation. To move the cursor, you had to be in command-mode and use the 'vi keys'. There was no arrow key and delete-key support. Needing to press escape to move or delete a character used to drive me crazy. And if I was in command-mode and had to edit a character at the end-of-the-line - my biggest frustration was needing to remember to press 'a' instead of 'i'. I realize that vi has evolved but I was scarred by my experience .

Admittedly though, I tend to still use vi to edit simple configuration files. But I still prefer emacs in general.

You could install and use Zile for quick and dirty config file edits. Same emacs interface and key bindings in a much lighter weight package. I still use emacs most of the time though.

jmritenour

vi all the way. Sometimes, when I spend a lot of time working in *nix systems and then have to go do stuff in Windows, I catch myself trying to us vi commands in notepad. "Why the hell isn't :wq wor.... oh... yeah..."

undomiel

gvim for windows is what you are needing then. It's my text editor of preference on windows. download : vim online

dontstop

I have usually found:

vim/vi: System Admins (Due to being installed on most systems)
emacs: Programmers (features/community/addons etc)

Thanks,
jml.

W Stewart

Vim all the way and if I can't use that then I'll take vi. I'll tolerate nano as well but there's no reason to use it as vi is always available and i'm not a noob.

W Stewart

I looked at emacs once and dismissed it like the bald headed step child that I'm ashamed of.(sorry lack of sleep).