Probably because emacs is not installed by default?

TRAMP could also work, depending on the situation.

Regardless of which team you're on or why, the base installs of almost every distro includes vi or vim, but many leave out emacs and nano. Since you have to pick one editor to be the first one taught, it makes sense to teach vim to avoid losing the learner.

This is as it should be.

Emacs is about enlightenment; enlightenment is a path to be walked not a destination; it is a journey you must choose.

Along the way, you might accidentally edit text files. That's not the point.

Anyway, makes sense to me why it's not default included.

> Emacs is about enlightenment;

And that's why I'm on team Vim. I rather not use a tool that needs/uses cult-like slogans to convince people to keep them hooked. I want the usefulness to be the reason, not some kind of belief system.

It was a joke my friend

It's just a bit of playfulness.

Nobody is 'hooked' on Emacs because of slogans. A person uses Emacs because they like it.

But... that's what alcoholics say!

A defining feature of cults is how difficult it is to leave...

:q!

Have you ever tried exiting emacs? It's not easier than vim.

Lol "team vim," spoken like someone who doesn't know what Emacs is at all

I use a vim implemented in Emacs Lisp -- evil-mode -- so I can have access to the rest of the usefulness of Emacs while also having everything model editing has to offer

The GP is joking, but I'll happily use a vim in Emacs while the reverse is impossible, and you can figure out what that means for your belief system

I also just use regular vim sometimes

Tools aren't teams

He said, rooting for a tool.

Surely we can all agree that nano (pico) is a toy compared to either.

Nano has a lot of functionality. Not really a toy.

> enlightenment is a path to be walked not a destination

There is no path without an end.

I don't understand why so many distros ship vi instead of vim. Vim was realeased as an improvement in 1991!!!

To save precious disk space

Including Vi-improved would be complicit in the assumption there was an imperfection in vi.

I am not aware of many distros shipping the original vi today. However, a lot of them ship busybox, which is a self-contained and lightweight collection of standard UNIX tools, including a simplified vi. If you have a UNIX shell on an embedded system, there is a good chance it is running busybox.

vim is an order of magnitude bigger than the entire busybox package. In fact, it may be bigger than the entire system.

Clearly, you would only want to focus on the superior editor. /smile

In this day and age, an intro to Linux should probably recommend an editor which has CUA shortcuts by default, like micro, or most GUI editors.

I don't think an intro to GNU/Linux really also needs to be an intro to a text editor at all. Just teach people the man command, tell them a few of the editors that exist, and maybe mention tools like vimtutor.

To be sorta serious about editors for a min. I think console editors should definitely be in there because a lot of Linux access takes place over ssh without a GUI.

And Vi/Vim is present everywhere, so it is a must for sysadmins.

Sysadmins can install whatever editor(s) they prefer!

Thee ability to modify the root filesystem should never exist on a production system.

I've been using and administering linux machines for decades and I can't remember ever using emacs. I still only know the real basics of vi - how to insert/delete and most importantly how to save and quit or quit without saving. Anything requiring more manipulation (even copy/pasting), I switch to something like Geany instead.

The point of learning vi is that it's nearly always available, even on a broken system and is often a key part of fixing broken systems, so learning the basics of it is more or less essential. Not even just Linux - I've had to bring up vi on an ancient HP-UX system once to get it to boot.