From owner-freebsd-stable Sat May 29 22:45:59 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from cygnus.rush.net (cygnus.rush.net [209.45.245.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 883D51537C for ; Sat, 29 May 1999 22:45:57 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bright@rush.net) Received: from localhost (bright@localhost) by cygnus.rush.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id BAA16141; Sun, 30 May 1999 01:07:07 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 30 May 1999 01:07:06 -0500 (EST) From: Alfred Perlstein To: Dustin Lang Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Ramblings from a Newbie... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, 29 May 1999, Dustin Lang wrote: > > Hi, > > I've been playing with FreeBSD the last few days. I've got 3.2-Release > installed, got a custom kernel built, and I'm now customizing things to > my liking. Everything has gone smoothly, with a few bumps due to errors > in the operator code (ie, me :). > > I come from a Linux background, so some of the BSDisms take a little > getting used to. From what I've seen so far, FreeBSD seems like a good > solid system with a lot of attention given to details. I'm impressed with > the attention to security issues throughout. Also, my mind is still > grappling with the idea that there is only _one_ distribution. ("What kind > of system do you run?" "Well, I started out with Slackware 3.4, but now > I'm running kernel 2.2.9 and glibc2 and... should I just send you > `ldconfig -v`?" :) > > I have just one question, but it's not specific to FreeBSD or even BSD. > Why on earth do people use vi? I'm not trying to start a flame war or > anything, but it's just so unfriendly. Doing the install was simple > and very friendly up until I did a 'chsh' and got vi! My editor of choice > is pico, the editor that looks like pine and has instructions on the > bottom. Sure, it's simple and doesn't have all the advanced features you > might want in an editor, but for doing a 'chsh', it's sufficient! Of > course, that's just me... that's odd, freebsd has "ee" a simple editor that _should_ be the default... I dislike ee and I hate pico. Pico is so featureless it's shameful, for instance can you: delete 5 lines quickly? 5dd now go up 20 lines and insert that cut text? 20kP append to end of line? A replace all X for next 5 lines? :.,+5s/pattern/replace/g go to a line, like 2000? 2000G not worry about getting your lines wrapped? yes and then there's wonderful "gvim" (/usr/ports/editors/vim) which offers an X interface, mouse and syntax highlighting. When I was first exposed to vi after using Pico I thought I'd never use it as well, however since the professor at my school made sure to ridicule you unless you were using vi several weeks into his classes I soon made the switch. trust me, it's worth it. Not only programmers and administrators benifit from vi but at my last job it was even a requirement for the HTML people. It'll also save your skin when/if you ever have to do something on a bare-install commercial unix, as they mostly don't come equiped with anything besides vi. learn vi, it's good for you. a lot of companies hiring for admin jobs ask a few vi questions as the first thing of the interview, if you don't know the answers you should consider the interview over. -Alfred > Before hitting reply and flaming me, check this out and have a chuckle... > http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/99may/19990508.html > (disregard the Linux advertising/propaganda) laff :) I remeber edlin and have used "ex" quite a number of times to fix really broken things... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message