Submitted 14-Aug-00 by Zaleski, Matthew (M.E.):
> I disagree. I don't like vi but I learned enough to do some basic editing.
> Vi is about the only full screen editor that's guaranteed to be on any
> Unix/Linux box. At least knowing the basics of using it is valuable when
> your system takes a dump.
Well said. Ignoring arguments about vile vi or evil emacs or pokey pico,
I invite any of you to grab a rescue disk at random (that's right, just
mosey on over to freshmeat and grab a mini distro that fits on a floppy)
and look at your choices for editors. vi. The reason is simple. It is
on every *nix system (as the above poster mentioned) and in the stipped
down "vi" mode, it's fairly light. Because it has been so pervasive for
more than 20 years, it is (rightly) assumed that any admin with more
than three brain cells has at least tried it in case he needed it.
As a further test, for those of you who have (properly) partitioned your
drive to have a small / with separate /usr and /home partitions, try
going to runlevel 1 (maintenance mode). unmounting /usr and see what
editors you have available (you guessed it: vi).
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