Anselm Lingnau wrote: > If it was up to me I'd have kicked vi out of the LPIC-1 exam five years ago – > not because I think it isn't worth knowing about, but because one can learn > everything anyone could ever conceivably need to know about vi (and then some) > in a 20-minute session with “vimtutor” and it is stupid to ask questions on > that stuff; we don't ask people questions about the keyboard and mouse, > either.
This is an interesting take on the debate. Does LPI need to cover an editor at all, in the Objectives? I made the previous point that if an editor is covered, I expect most employers would expect Vi to be that editor, since it's the only one on all servers, minimal installs and in recovery modes (e.g., busybox [1]). But does LPI need to cover it at all? Again, a very interesting take on the debate. > It's probably a good idea for budding Linux sysadmins to futz around with vi > for a while, much like engineering students are required to futz around with > hand tools for a while even if in real life they use CNC machines (and it's > nice to be able to make do with hand tools if your CNC machine has broken > down). Well, that analogy also depends on the program and its locale. I.e., What one locale calls "engineering" might be "engineering technology" elsewhere. > I get the “vi is everywhere” argument, but for some considerable time > now mainstream Linux distributions have been more likely to come with > something like nano or pico, rather than vi, out of the box, so that doesn't > really hold water anymore. I haven't seen one in a minimal install or recovery mode that doesn't include Vi, and plenty that do not include any other editor. As before, I use busybox [1] is my 'objective' reference. There may be others. > Finally, on Linux, few people if any actually use *vi*, a very primitive > editor by 21st-century standards, in their daily lives – even those people who > *think* they're using vi generally use vim instead, which is a much more > capable program that has about as much to do with vi as an F-16 has to do with > a Piper Cub but is not part of the official LPIC curriculum. Again, there are still TTY issues with remote consoles, and not all cursors work the same across all environments. Has the extensive termcap support improved drastically in the past decade-plus? Yes. Most Linux sysadmins of the '10s don't have to deal with those issues of the '00s, let alone '90s and earlier. But learning the Vi commands for things like cursor movement and other Meta that allow one to edit on any, basic QWERTY keyboard goes a long way. So it's hard to argue Vi not being the 'common denominator.' But ... again, I have to heed the question if there should be an editor at all in the Objectives? I think that's really the question, and not so much Vi. - bjs [1] Busybox command support (always good to review): - https://busybox.net/BusyBox.html -- Bryan J Smith - http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith E-mail: b.j.smith at ieee.org or me at bjsmith.me _______________________________________________ lpi-examdev mailing list lpi-examdev@lpi.org http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-examdev
