This article spotlights alternative tools to vi, a screen-oriented text editor originally created for the Unix operating system.
Vim “Vi IMproved” offers many additional features to vi such as syntax highlighting, mouse support, graphical versions, visual mode, many new editing commands and a large amount of extension in the area of ex commands. Vim is included with almost every modern Linux distribution.
The software featured here is free and open source. All tools provide a command-line interface (CLI) unless otherwise stated.
| Vim-like Text Editors | |
|---|---|
| Neovim | Vim-fork focused on extensibility and usability |
| Helix | Kakoune / Neovim inspired editor. |
| Lapce | Modern editor in Rust which uses native GUI and GPU rendering |
| LunarVim | IDE layer for Neovim |
| Kakoune | Implements Vi’s "keystrokes as a text editing language" model |
| NvChad | Neovim config aiming to provide a base configuration |
| vile | Text editor that combines aspects of the Emacs and vi editors |
| Vis | Combining modal editing with structural regular expressions |
| gVim | Vim with a built-in GUI |
| amp | Vim-like editor written in Rust |
| Vy | Vim-like in Python made from scratch |
| Levee | Also known as Captain Video |
Are we missing any open source alternatives to vi/vim? Please let us know.
All the CLI tools in this series.
| Alternatives to CLI tools |
|---|
| age // awk // bc // cal // cat // cd // chmod // cksum // cloc // cmp // compress // cp // cron // curl // cut // date // dd // df // diff // dig // du // find // ftp // grep // gzip // hexdump // history // jq // kill // less // locate // ls // lsof // make // man // more // mv / ping // ps // psql // rename // rm // sed // split // ssh // strings // sudo // sysctl // talk // tar // telnet // time // top // touch // traceroute // tree // uname // uniq // uptime // vi // watch // Wget // who // whois // xargs |
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |