Valuable News – 2026/03/30

Wow. 2.7 million people have gone to stack overflow to find out how to exit vi. There's an old bash.org post about it, which I'd always thought was a joke. (The vi article link https://vivianvoss.net/blog/vi)
I can't find the bash.org post right now, but it was called everyone's first vi session or something like that.
 
scottro said:
Wow. 2.7 million people have gone to stack overflow to find out how to exit vi. There's an old bash.org post about it, which I'd always thought was a joke. (The vi article link https://vivianvoss.net/blog/vi)
I can't find the bash.org post right now, but it was called everyone's first vi session or something like that.
Click to expand...
Haha yeah, that doesn’t surprise me at all 😄 vi can be really confusing the first time you open it, especially if you don’t know how to switch modes. I remember being completely stuck and having to look it up myself. It’s one of those classic “rite of passage” moments for anyone getting into Linux or Unix systems. Funny how something so simple ends up being such a common struggle!
 
Yampress, there's some sort of meme or joke somewhere, about ssh-ing into a Debian machine, using vipw, and realizing their default editor is nano, and wondering how to close it. (Yes the instructions are at the bottom, but if you've been expecting vi, it can be a shock).

As an aside, I don't think Debian's the only one with nano, (which bears some resemblance to ee), as the default editor.
 
I have a friend who’s a computer science teacher…
Whenever he wants to give the kids a bit of a challenge, he makes them open vi and write some text. oh, ah...

Yes, Debian uses nano… But I use it too, along with mecdit from the mc package…
Of course, when you first entered the world of BSD, you had to grapple with vi to get anything done. Even updating the FreeBSD system via old way required knowledge of vi. However, on FreeBSD I prefer ee and of course mcedit too.
 
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