On 2025-11-15, rbowman wrote:

On Fri, 14 Nov 2025 16:09:47 -0500, c186282 wrote:

WordStar and close variants were VERY popular back in the day. Kind
of everyone's "first word processor".
Everyone used it alongside Lotus-123.

It was bundled on the Osborne 1 CP/M machine. I got a lot of miles out of
it as a programming editor in the text mode. When I finally moved to the
DOS world I bought Brief.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brief_(text_editor)

'ed' wasn't much fun. I think I way have had a freeware clone of vi that
was no Joy either. I guessing 95% of the people who say 'I use vi' never have. Most Linux distros bring up Vim if you type 'vi'. One exception is Arch. 'vi' is a hard link to ex which comes up in the visual mode for that old timey flavor.

IIRC that source was lost or elusive for a long time, or perhaps held
back by lack of permission to distribute?

I think there were recent attempts to distribute vi from that source
(which may rely on Caldera having had the rights to the UNIX
source?). But I haven't checked this further, and may have grossly misunderstood something...

There was also a third version in busybox, right?

(X-posting to alt.folklore.computers for the vi history part.)

--
Nuno Silva

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 15 Nov 2025 18:48:51 GMT, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

I find it takes a lot of munging to get vim to *really* work like vi.

To me, that sounds like someone saying ?it takes a lot of munging to get a Trabant to *really* work like a Morris Minor?. I can?t imagine myself
wanting to use either.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 16 Nov 2025 05:11:07 GMT, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

Well, squids & kids, but my fingers do vi automatically. Anything else
not so much.

I used it for many years, too, on proprietary Unix systems.

Once Linux came to dominate the scene, I made the choice to switch and not look back.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2025-11-16, Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On 16 Nov 2025 05:11:07 GMT, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

Well, squids & kids, but my fingers do vi automatically. Anything else
not so much.

I used it for many years, too, on proprietary Unix systems.

Once Linux came to dominate the scene, I made the choice to switch and not look back.

I've used vi since first encountering *nix systems in the early '90s. It isn't my primary editor (that'll be emacs :), but I've always relied on it being there
on any system, and usable in any state that has working I/O. I was a little taken back, and a little disappointed, that when I installed the latest Ubuntu (minimal) distribution, vi wasn't installed by default. A sign of the times?

--
Ian

"Tamahome!!!" - "Miaka!!!"

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sun, 16 Nov 2025 12:15:51 -0000 (UTC), Ian wrote:

I was a little taken back, and a little disappointed, that when I
installed the latest Ubuntu (minimal) distribution, vi wasn't installed
by default. A sign of the times?

Was there a default editor installed? A GUI one, perhaps?

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2025-11-16, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

On Sun, 16 Nov 2025 12:15:51 -0000 (UTC), Ian wrote:

I was a little taken back, and a little disappointed, that when I
installed the latest Ubuntu (minimal) distribution, vi wasn't installed
by default. A sign of the times?

On my Ubuntu 25.10 box

$ which vi
/usr/bin/vi

ls -l /usr/bin/vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Sep 23 2022 /usr/bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi

$ ls -l /etc/alternatives/vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Jan 9 2025 /etc/alternatives/vi -> /usr/bin/ vim.gtk3

That looks like a full install with GUI (from the gtk3 ref.)

This was on a minimal install for a server*, exactly the environment in which having "vi" is most useful. "apt-get install vim" sorted it:

root@vm57:~# which vi
/usr/bin/vi

root@vm57:~# ls -l /usr/bin/vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Sep 15 16:38 /usr/bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi

root@vm57:~# ls -l /etc/alternatives/vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 Nov 10 13:57 /etc/alternatives/vi -> /usr/bin/vim.basic




* Ubuntu isn't my preferred choice for servers, or anything really, but this particular application was developed for it, and I haven't got the time or inclination to port it to a different distribution.

--
Ian

"Tamahome!!!" - "Miaka!!!"

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2025-11-16, Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 16 Nov 2025 12:15:51 -0000 (UTC), Ian wrote:

I was a little taken back, and a little disappointed, that when I
installed the latest Ubuntu (minimal) distribution, vi wasn't installed
by default. A sign of the times?

Was there a default editor installed? A GUI one, perhaps?

Probably one of the toytown CLI editors like nano or pico. This was a
minimal server install, no GUI. "apt-get install vim" sorted it.

--
Ian

"Tamahome!!!" - "Miaka!!!"

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Mon, 17 Nov 2025 08:24:27 -0000 (UTC), Ian wrote:

* Ubuntu isn't my preferred choice for servers, or anything really, but this particular application was developed for it, and I haven't got the time or inclination to port it to a different distribution.

What exactly was there about it that needed porting?

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2025-11-17, Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 17 Nov 2025 08:24:27 -0000 (UTC), Ian wrote:

* Ubuntu isn't my preferred choice for servers, or anything really, but this >> particular application was developed for it, and I haven't got the time or >> inclination to port it to a different distribution.

What exactly was there about it that needed porting?

I have no idea. It is available as an "apt-get install" on the latest Ubuntu, from the standard repos, documented, tested and "supported". It isn't available in the standard repos on other distributions, so that would need time and effort to locate a compatible 3rd party binary, or compile from source. Even
if that "just works" it's alredy more effort and risk than installing Ubuntu and using the provided package, as this is on a dedicated VM anyway.

Sometimes You just need things to work, and don't want another adventure...

--
Ian

"Tamahome!!!" - "Miaka!!!"

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)