vi vs vim on CentOS and RHEL

With a default minimum install of Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or RHEL without the logos and price tag one gets a very crummy version of vi. Really nasty. And then even when you yum install -y vim and get vim-enhanced then you still have /bin/vi.

Nasty.

So I went looking for a solution.

This one sorts it for all users. And no you don’t just want to put an alias in your .bashr/.zshrc because there’s all sorts of programmes that don’t reference those configs.

Courtesy of Jethro Carr

Change the default /etc/profile.d/vim.sh from this:

    if [ -n "$BASH_VERSION" -o -n "$KSH_VERSION" -o -n "$ZSH_VERSION" ]; then
      [ -x /usr/bin/id ] || return
      [ `/usr/bin/id -u` -le 100 ] && return
      # for bash and zsh, only if no alias is already set
      alias vi >/dev/null 2>&1 || alias vi=vim
    fi

to this:

    if [ -n "$BASH_VERSION" -o -n "$KSH_VERSION" -o -n "$ZSH_VERSION" ];then
      if [ -f /usr/bin/vim ]; then
        alias vi='vim'
      fi
    fi