[oblio]

Inertia.

Such base programs basically need to go through the Debian packaging gauntlet if they want to succeed.

What I mean by that is that generally they need to persuade distros to be anointed the "official" tool, i.e. Debian or Fedora would have to select Neovim as the new default text instead of Vim.

Then you need a few years for the changes to trickle down everywhere: Debian -> Ubuntu-> Mint -> ..., Fedora -> RHEL, ... After that distro releases need to be cut and people need to upgrade.

I think a full cycle, where a tool becomes ubiquitous if it gets adopted in the base installs, is probably 10 years. See systemd.

[trealira]

> What I mean by that is that generally they need to persuade distros to be anointed the "official" tool, i.e. Debian or Fedora would have to select Neovim as the new default text instead of Vim.

You're probably right. However, I think it's more likely that the Linux distros drop Vim entirely and make Nano the default editor than that they replace Vim with Neovim.

The BSDs have nvi as the default editor, IIRC, so they won't need to change anything.

[layer8]

Nano already is the default editor (via /etc/alternatives/editor).

[user3939382]

> Inertia.

At some point I tried to switch and some setting broke in my config (mouse mode?) I forget what it was. It took me another 3-4 years before I tried again.

[planede]

In what sense vim is default in Debian?

[layer8]

It’s not, Nano is.