"The second course will help you understand the basics
of working with the vi text editor in Linux. At some time everyone
who uses Linux will need a text editor. One of the most important
reasons for learning vi is that it is loaded on every Linux distro
by default whereas others like nano or emacs are not. So whatever,
text editor you choose be sure you load it and use it before you
need it.
"Text-mode editors are light-weight, fast, and don't require a
lot of overhead to run. Also, if you ever have trouble booting your
system to the GUI, you may find yourself having to hand-edit
configuration files from the command-line in order to fix the
problem. Of course, you wouldn't be able to use a GUI-type text
editor for that. You can also use a text-mode editor to perform
remote system administration. That's a handy feature if you ever
have to remotely configure a Linux server.
"At first glance, you may be somewhat mystified as to why anyone
would want to use vi. It is, after all, possible to create
text-mode programs with pull-down menus, but the developers of vi
decided not to include them. So, you're probably thinking that vi
is terribly difficult to learn. "Why not learn something else?",
you're asking. Here's where that first look can be somewhat
misleading."
