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Vim

It is a contraction of Vi Improved, and a FOSS, screen-based text editor authored by , Bram Moolenaar. It is an improved clone of Bill Joy's vi. Neovim is another fork of Vim that improves the extensibility and maintainability of Vim.

Users who are just getting started, the Vim and Neovim is not that apparent and are basically identical.

Installation

vi is usually pre-installed in most Linux distros but vim needs to be mannualy installed using respective Package Manager of the distro. For Ubuntu/Debian based distros, 

sudo apt install vim

Usage

Inorder to start vim, one can simply type vim in Terminal and start using it. To open any file in vim one can use 

vim fileName

Useful Commands (Brief)

vim has some common modes . The most important modes are:

  • Normal mode – used for editor commands. This is also the default mode, unless the insertmode option is specified.
  • Visual mode – similar to normal mode, but used to highlight areas of text. Normal commands can be run on the highlighted area, for instance to move or edit a selection.
  • Insert mode – similar to editing in most modern editors. In this mode, buffers can be modified with the text inserted.
  • Command-line or Cmdline mode – supports a single line input at the bottom of the Vim window. Normal commands (beginning with :), and some other keys for specific actions (including pattern search and the filter command) activate this mode. On completion of the command, Vim returns to the previous mode.

i : Insert mode (To start editing) esc : Press esc button to enter in Command mode :w : Save the file but continue editing :wq : Save and exit :q : Exit without saving :q! : Ignore the changes made and exit

For more commands and shortcuts read Useful Vim Commands.