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by BanazirGalbasi 1047 days ago
I feel like I've said the same thing here 3-4 times now, but for some of us it's about what's the most minimal setup required to use the tool. As a sysadmin, I want to be used to the most common tools and configurations that will be on a server without having to take the time to install something new. I could include NeoVim in my Ansible configs for setting up new servers, but generally servers are kept lean so I would rather just use vi/vim for basic edits anyway.

I do use NeoVim with a lightly-customized LazyVim setup on my personal desktop, but I don't use it much differently than I use Vim at the moment. I'm not a power-user, just someone who's comfortable enough with the keybinds that I leave :w everywhere when using a non-vi editor.

2 comments

> for some of us it's about what's the most minimal setup required to use the tool.

That's was the case for me. When I moved from vi to vim 25 years ago, I devoted a lot of time to customizing it for maximum developer efficiency. Around that time, I got a job where I regularly used five different HP/UX machines, a couple of Solaris boxes, and a few other random machines. At the next job, it was HP/UX, AIX, and IRIX. Few of those machines had vim at all, let alone a version compatible with the setup I had on Linux.

I eventually stopped doing the fancy things and settled into using plain vanilla vi, knowing that it would at least work consistently on every machine I used.

Serious question: how is neovim “heavier” than vim?
vim often ships with the base image, so you'd be comparing installing neovim on top of that to installing nothing.