What are some things you wish you had known when switching to Linux?

elfahor@lemmy.blahaj.zone to Linux@lemmy.ml – 195 points –

I start: the most important thing is not the desktop, it's the package manager.

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How to quit vim.

Used to use gedit, the found nano and it was awesome. Then found Vim... I RAN back to nano haha

I hear you 😁. For whatever reason I stuck with the Vim tutorial and did it a few times over the years. Now I'm using the IdeaVIM extension in IntelliJ - that mode system is just sooo powerful. It has a horrible learning curve, yes, but if you manage to stick with it, it pays huge dividends. I probably know, like, 18% of all commands, and it completely changed how I edit files (mostly for coding, but also text).

Alright alright. You win haha seriously, you've convinced me to give vim another chance.

Use vimtutor. It comes with vim and teaches you to the basic vim commands from within vim.

And don't worry about exiting vim, that's lesson 1.2 :)

Hahaha!!! I actually know how to exit Vim. Had to learn it when setting up a server config on a server that only had Vim installed. Once set up, nano got installed.

This vimtutor looks pretty awesome, and I can't wait to get learning on it. In all honesty, vim does looks super helpful. It's just that I usually use text editors to quickly setup configs, when gui won't do or I'm just done with gui for the moment. During those times, my patience is usually low, and searching how to save or quit or open or do any other basic functionality, reduces that patience further. But vimtutor makes it a point to learn vim when I'm not trying to get in, get it done, and get out. This may work for me. I may actually learn vim!

I remember, back in the day, I asked on IRC how to edit a file in Linux. Someone said vi. Little did I know that in chat someone said, the next question is how do I quit. I asked that exact question. Yes chat erupted.

Either by making it segfault or you don’t.

I got a whole software developer career going out of my attempts to exit vim.

For people who actually don't know this, yet: Type :x.
This means β€œeXit, save any changes”

If you want to leave and discard your changes, type :q!
The :q means β€œQuit”, without any other instructions. This will warn you if you changed anything, adding ! means β€œforce this command”.

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