is there a difference between gvim and vim on a linux machine ?
I installed an enhanced version of VIM editor which includes recent enhancements:
vim-enhanced-2:7.2.411-1.8.el6(x86_64)
And after installation, I could see .viminfo and .vimrc in my home directory. I even made changes on .vimrc and intentionally put some wrong codes in there and it errored out. So, I know for sure that it is calling .vimrc upon invoking vim. I also had a .vimrc from past for GVIM, and I copied that file into this new .vimrc, and again there is no complain.
So far so good.
But now, when I open VIM, it opens the file in the terminal! And it is not opening a new window for GVIM. But I can see that it has almost all of GVIM capabilities!
How could I make this open in a separate window when I open a file?
Functionally there is no difference between VIM and GVIM. They both work the same and have same keyboard sequences. VIM does not need a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and uses terminal shell environment to provide text editing features.
Both GVim and Vim are the same, the difference is that Gvim offers an interface that doesn't run in a terminal window. Basically, Gvim has GUI-like menus and toolbar. Here are quotes from Quora that provide more information: VIM is designed for using the keyboard efficiently and not for using the mouse.
Yes - "killall vim".
Gvim-easy is just the same as Gvim except for the fact that it does additional initialization listed in help (see @Tim quote): sources one script.
if you are asking the difference between vim and gvim... there are some (personal opinions):
vim runs in terminal, if you set up your terminal correctly, vim supports 256 (or 88) colors. however gvim can support from 000000 - FFFFFF
colors.
again, depending on the terminal you used. some key mapping may be difficult to achieve. E.g. I wanted to map insert mode alt-i/j/k/l
in my vim, I tried a lot, unfortunately, so far it doesn't work for me. But in gvim it is much easier.
(plugins may needed) like browser or other IDEs
You can start vim as long as you can get a terminal. even tty or pts. But with Gvim you have to have GUI installed.
ctrl-Z
if you want to test your codes in shell/terminal, or execute some shell commands during your editing. In vim you can just ctrl-z
to back to terminal do what you want, and fg
back to vim. With Gvim, you cannot do that.
When you are in gvim, you have that single window, switching to other program/application is not as easy (read comfortable) as vim in tmux/screen.
There may be more, but at this point I just think of those. Personally 90% time I use vim.
On some systems, gvim
is just vim -g
: you can edit a file in a GVim window from your shell with $ vim -g filename
or simply $ gvim filename
.
On other systems, like RedHat IIRC, vim
and gvim
are two different executables built at the same time with the same features: you can edit a file in a GVim window from your shell with $ gvim filename
.
Either way, you should try to get your hands on a more recent build because 7.2.411 is almost exactly four years old and quite a lot happened in the mean time.
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With