Re:NetBSD 11 desktop on a Raspberry Pi 4
by qubex on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @11:21AM
(#50442514)
I find it hilarious that the author deliberately chooses to talk the novice user through the use of Vim (including how to quit it) rather than suggest something simpler such as pico or nano.
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Or the newly released atto(1)
Re:NetBSD 11 desktop on a Raspberry Pi 4
by lilbigdoot on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @11:56AM
(#50443016)
Afaik pico and nano aren't installed by default on NetBSD but vi is
Re:NetBSD 11 desktop on a Raspberry Pi 4
by skrellm on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @01:03PM
(#50443856)
I'm using vi for twenty years now, mostly because I still haven't figured out how to close it.
Re:NetBSD 11 desktop on a Raspberry Pi 4
by lilbigdoot on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @02:27PM
(#50445049)
Ngl nano opened the other day on a new system and I panicked. Took me more than a few seconds to figure out how to save and exit.
Re:NetBSD 11 desktop on a Raspberry Pi 4
by skrellm on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @05:03AM
(#50451596)
I was just joking.
Yeah that gradually dawned on me when I read the comment about the recently released atto text editor.
Re:NetBSD 11 desktop on a Raspberry Pi 4
by jaypatelani on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @08:44AM
(#50453344)
Also for editing sudoers file visudo is recommended. Vi is easy once you get hang of it.
It's not vim. It's Bostic's nvi. And in fact one of the things that vim users need to be reminded about is that the habitual :wqa and :qa are vim-isms and do not work in other clones such as nvi.
Fair enough, I stand corrected. The point I was trying to make though (and clearly I failed, since I’ve been heavily downvoted) is that the poco/nano/atto ‘lineage’ of “Microsoft Edit”-like text editors are quite a bit more approachable for newcomers than the holy-war dichotomy of vi and emacs would seem to imply.
One of the things that FreeBSD has had for a long time is the 'Easy Editor', written in 1990 for HP-UX and added to FreeBSD a couple of years later. There was even its successor 'Another Easy Editor' which the world has completely forgotten about.
* https://man.dragonflybsd.org/?command=ee§ion=1
* https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ee&manpath=FreeBSD...
But NetBSD and OpenBSD went their own ways on this, to the extent that NetBSD didn't even have a non-vi-like editor in base until just a month or so ago.
Yeah I just found it genuinely amusing that the author felt a duty to digress into quitting vi for the sake of their audience but I’ve been downvoted and apparently people must have very strong opinions on this and I apologise for any offence caused.
[sobs in ed(1)/ex(1)]
Re:NetBSD 11 desktop on a Raspberry Pi 4
by so-cal-schemer on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @06:32PM
(#50447823)
The true vi:
Vi is actually one mode of editing within the editor ex. When you are running vi you can escape to the line oriented editor of ex by giving the command Q. All of the : commands which were introduced above are available in ex. Likewise, most ex commands can be invoked from vi using :. Just give them without the : and follow them with a CR.