--On Monday, August 11, 2008 7:20 PM -0500 Lanny Marcus <lmmailinglists at gmail.com> wrote: >> Then you shouldn't go wrong, because I have yet to be on a linux box or a >> bsd box that didn't have some form or emulation of vi installed. > > vi is everywhere! But, apparently, I need to learn how to use Emacs or > another IDE too, so there's another learning curve. I agree, learn enough vi that you can deal with a minimal box for recovery situations. I learned EMACS back when it was written in TECO on a Tops-10 system. I didn't find it particularly hard to master. There's a built-in tutorial system to teach you basic navigation commands (eg. forward/backward character/word/line/page) and the default keystrokes make some sense (eg. ctrl-F is forward char, ESC-F is forward word, substitute B for backward, ctrl-P for previous line, ctrl-N for next line, etc.). Take a half hour to go through the tutorial and you should be pretty comfortable with the basics. vi derivatives are likely equally easy to master, but I've never been able to figure out the pattern for the keystrokes, so whenever I have to use it, I have to go look up the commands. These days I use Lugaru Epsilon, a commercial EMACS clone available for several platforms. But I want to get used to the traditional EMACS shipped with most distros.