Install

Windows

From a Powershell or cmd window as Administrator...

winget install -e --id vim.vim

To avoid using the GUI at all, you can do this from Powershell...

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", $env:Path + ";C:\Program Files\Vim\vim91", "Machine")

Ubuntu

sudo apt install vim

Usage

Delete blank Lines

:g/^$/d

Folding

This functionality is useful if you are coding (Java, Python, KSH etc) and want to collapse a section of your code for easier visibility of nesting levels etc.

For example, to enable folding of sections of a Java program delineated by { and }...

:setlocal foldmethod=manual

Move to the start of the code block and type: zfa}

Use za to toggle the fold off when you are done with it.

There are many other folding options which are nicely documented here...

Configuration

To change the colorscheme in your vi session (e.g. so that comments appear in a better colour than the default dark blue)...

colorscheme desert

Alternatively, to make vi appear with no colours (as it does in AIX)

syntax off

To make a colorscheme change permanent add something like this to your .vimrc file in your home directory

syntax on

colorscheme desert

To step through the list of available colorschemes use...

colorscheme [space] [tab]

To get a list of available colorschemes use...

colorscheme [space] [ctrl-d]

You can also see the install colorschemes from the shell prompt using...

ls /usr/share/vim/vim*/colors

You can add colorschemes by downloading them to /usr/share/vim/vim*/colors (to make them available to everyone) or to ~/.vim/colors (to make them available to only you).

Bibliography