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Comment by pointyhat | Hacker News Reader

It is on Debian and CentOS server installs and is available on a Ubuntu default install. It's the common denominator.

Why frig around with emacs, pico, nano etc when vi is always there and is the same?

The Debian base system comes with both vim-tiny and nano. Nano is the default; when the installer wants you to edit something, you get nano:

    $ ls -l ./etc/alternatives/editor
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Sep  7 06:19 ./etc/alternatives/editor -> /bin/nano

If you want to use vim for development, use vim. But "it's the default" is simply an untrue statement. Vim (-full) is no more "the default" than Emacs. Both need to be manually installed on nearly every operating system.

(OpenBSD ships with both nvi and mg, FWIW.)

I'm pretty sure its vim-tiny

Please substitute "vi" in my comments for "vi or appropriate compatible substitute" such as nvi, vim, elvis etc. They all work the same with the usual subset of commands :)

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