As a Linux user, I have and probably always will have a lot to learn about the systems I use - definitely something worth posting about, but it didn't seem right to put this in a normal post since I'll be updating this over time. Here are some compiled notes on some of the main things I use working with Linux.

Last updated: 9th Mar 19

Bash

Bash is the shell that I use in Linux and in macOS up to Catalina, which sets the default shell to zsh.

Keystroke	Action
ctrl-k	truncate the line at the cursor
ctrl-r	enter incremental history search. ctrl + r/s searches backwards and forwards
alt + right/left	jump the cursor over words
ctrl + a/e	jump to the start or end of the line

In macOS, ctrl-s might not work. This seems to have been turned off as a safety measure against hitting ctrl-s outside of the search (which enters XOFF mode, cutting off stdin from the terminal - the remedy being ctrl-q). To allow ctrl-s to work, run stty -ixon -ixoff.

Vi

The more you put into Vi/Vim, the more you get out. If you just use its basic features with no customisation, there's no reason to use it over nano or gedit, but its more advanced features make it a viable dev environment for headless Linux.

Windows

From Vi's docs, a window is a view on a buffer, which is a bit of text loaded into memory. You can split your view up into windows on startup with -o or -O to split horizontally or vertically, or after Vi has started:

Keystroke	Action
:new/:vnew	split the window horizontally or vertically with a new empty buffer
:split/:vsplit [file]	same, except with the current buffer or [file]

Once multiple windows are open:

Keystroke	Action
ctrl-w <direction>	navigate the cursor between windows
ctrl-w K/J/H/L	move the current window to the top/bottom/left/right
ctrl-w +/-	in/decrement the current window height
ctrl-w	in/decrement the current window width
[vertical] resize n	change the current window size to n
:only	close all other windows
:ls	list all buffers

Tabs

A tab is a collection of windows.

• :tabnew to open a new tab with an empty buffer
• :tabedit <file> to edit a file in a new tab
• gt and gT to move between tabs
• vi -p <file1> <file2> ... to open multiple files, each in their own tab

Diff mode

I didn't know Vi could do this at first, but it's pretty cool.

• vi -d <file1> <file2> ... to open the given files in diff mode, where differences between buffers are highlighted
• :diffsplit <file> to open a new file, comparing with the current buffer
• :vertical diffsplit <file> to do the above but with a vertical split
• :set scrollbind locks the scrolling between diff-ed buffers

Multiline editing

Vi doesn't support multiple cursors, but does have features for multiline editing:

• Select the lines to edit with Visual Block (ctrl-v). From here, you can:
  • insert text with I, then entering some text (it looks like you're only editing one line), then esc to exit insert mode and edit all lines.
  • append the end of the line with A, then proceeding as above for inserting text
  • delete text the same way as in other modes

Searching

You might already be familiar with Vi's search function (/ or ?), but here are some things you can do once it's found a match:

Keystroke	Action
n	search forwards
N	search backwards
ggn	go to the first match
GN	go to the last match

You can also append the search term with \c to make the search case insensitive, or \C for case sensitive. There are also a couple of search shortcuts:

Keystroke	Action
*/#	search forwards/backwards for occurrences of the word the cursor is on
g*/g#	same, except search for any occurrence, not just the exact word

autoindent

Solarized

Solarized is a Vi colour palette available at https://github.com/altercation/vim-colors-solarized, and it's much nicer than the default colours.

Sessions

• mksession <file> saves the current Vi session (windows, tabs, etc.) to a session file
• vi -S <file> loads a session file

Copy/paste

The system-wide clipboard won't work properly if you've got line numbers on or have a window or tmux pane off to the right hand side. Vi's visual selection, however, does work.

With some text selected (with visual, visual line, or visual block), d deletes the text and y ('yank') copies it. Then p or P pastes it after or before the cursor.

Marks

Marks are what Vi calls bookmarks. Each mark is identified by a single char - if it's a capital letter, it's global across all files.

Keystroke	Action
m<char>	create a mark
'<char> or `<char>	jump to a mark
:marks	list all marks
:delmarks <chars>	delete marks - can also multi-delete with, e.g, 'a-d'

Other random stuff

Keystroke	Action
:changes	view all of the file's current changes
J	join lines - like deleting the \n at the end of the line, except the cursor can be anywhere
set <settingname>?	show the value of a setting
set <settingname>&	reset a setting to its default

netrw

Netrw is the default file system explorer for Vi.

Keystroke	Action
:Explore	open netrw in the current window
:Sexplore (heh.)	split and open netrw
:Vexplore	vertically split and open netrw

In netrw:

• return enters a directory or opens a file in the current window
• the way it opens files is controlled by the variable g:netrw_browse_split
• 1 opens in a new split
• 2 opens in a vsplit
• 3 opens in a new tab

• 4 opens in the previous window

• I turns off the header

• i cycles through view types:
• 0: one file per line
• 1: ls -l-style view
• 2: ls-style view
• 3: tree view
• set g:netrw_liststyle in the vimrc to set a default view type
• set g:netrw_winsize to set a default (percentage) window size for netrw

tmux

Standing for Terminal MUltipleXer, tmux is kind of like GNU screen with some extra stuff, including window splitting and scripted sessions. A tmux session contains multiple windows, which in turn contains multiple panes - in this case a tmux window is like a Vi tab, and a tmux pane is a Vi window.

Once a tmux session is open:

Keystroke	Action
ctrl-b :	enter the tmux command line
ctrl-b + ( or )	switch between sessions
ctrl-b d	detach the client
ctrl-b c	create a new window
ctrl-b &	close the current window
ctrl-b + n or p	go to previous/next window
ctrl-b + ' or 0-9	go to a window
ctrl-b <arrow>	navigate between panes
ctrl-b ctrl-o	rotate all panes around the window
ctrl-b ctrl-<arrow>	resize the pane in increments of 1
ctrl-b alt-<arrow>	resize the pane in increments of 5

One thing I currently dislike about tmux is the number of keystroke-based commands, which I often find unintuitive. For certain features, I prefer string commands input via ctrl-b ::

Command	Action
rename-session <name>	rename the session
split-window/splitw	split the window into two panes - -v or -h for vertical/horizontal splits
rotate-window	rotate all panes around the window
resize-pane (-UDLR) <value>	resize the pane up/down/left/right by the given value
resize-pane (-xy) <value>	resize the pane to the given x/y value
break-pane	split off the current pane into a new window
capture-pane -S <fromline> -E <toline>	capture the contents of the pane into a buffer
list-buffers	list all paste buffers
delete-buffer -b <buffer>	delete a buffer
paste-buffer	enter the most recent buffer (or any buffer name with -b into the current pane
save-buffer <file>	write the most recent buffer (or any buffer name with -b to <file>

When I tried using Vi in tmux, I found that tmux was eating my colour scheme. This was fixed by adding set -g default-terminal "screen-256color" to my tmux.conf. I also ran into some problems with resizing windows on macOS because ctrl-<arrow> is a system command to switch between spaces. I got around this by:

• unbinding the ctrl-<arrow> commands
• re-binding each alt-<arrow> command to what ctrl-<arrow> was, since they're pretty similar anyway
• modifying the alt-<arrow> keyboard actions in Terminal settings:
• an alt-<arrow> sends a sequence of \033\033[ plus A, B, D and C for up, down, left and right respectively

(Or you can just use string commands.)

There's also a solarized-style tmux colour scheme available at https://github.com/seebi/tmux-colors-solarized.

TODO: screen, less, https://shapeshed.com/vim-netrw