The original vi has not been maintained for many years. Most distributions, including Debian, Fedora, etc, use a version of Vim which (mostly) is similar to how Vi was.
From Fedoras wiki:
“On Fedora, Vim (specifically the vim-minimal package) is also used to provide /bin/vi. This vi command provides no syntax highlighting for opened files, by default, just like the original vi editor. The vim-minimal package comes pre-installed on Fedora.”
From the vim-tiny package description on Debian:
“This package contains a minimal version of Vim compiled with no GUI and a small subset of features. This package’s sole purpose is to provide the vi binary for base installations.”
You are actually correct. I just checked the manifest of RHEL and it provides vim-minimal and not vi like I assumed.
I noticed that it behaves a bit different than the version available on AIX for example which for sure uses real vi, but I never gave it a second thought. Interesting.
Also OpenBSD use different versions, I’m guessing their vi is the original since it can’t handle utf-8. And iirc ex(1) is also a vim variant on Linux. I’ve never met anyone who actually uses ex though. ed(1) I think is just GNU ed. I am not certain about these versions though.
The original vi has not been maintained for many years. Most distributions, including Debian, Fedora, etc, use a version of Vim which (mostly) is similar to how Vi was.
From Fedoras wiki:
“On Fedora, Vim (specifically the vim-minimal package) is also used to provide /bin/vi. This vi command provides no syntax highlighting for opened files, by default, just like the original vi editor. The vim-minimal package comes pre-installed on Fedora.”
From the vim-tiny package description on Debian:
“This package contains a minimal version of Vim compiled with no GUI and a small subset of features. This package’s sole purpose is to provide the vi binary for base installations.”
You are actually correct. I just checked the manifest of RHEL and it provides vim-minimal and not vi like I assumed.
I noticed that it behaves a bit different than the version available on AIX for example which for sure uses real vi, but I never gave it a second thought. Interesting.
Also OpenBSD use different versions, I’m guessing their vi is the original since it can’t handle utf-8. And iirc ex(1) is also a vim variant on Linux. I’ve never met anyone who actually uses ex though. ed(1) I think is just GNU ed. I am not certain about these versions though.