Why is my vimtutor blank?
Solution 1
The vimtutor
command requires a Vim that has Vim scripting support compiled in. For those familiar with building Vim from source, this requires at least the normal
feature set or higher.
The default Ubuntu desktop installation only includes the vim-tiny package, which is Vim compiled with almost all optional features disabled. This variant of Vim provides enough to run vi
with all of the basic functionality of a vi-compatible editor, but none of the power of Vim. Since it does not have Vim scripting support enabled, it cannot work with the vimtutor
command. You should install one of the more capable Vim variant packages instead:
Any one of these packages provide a Vim that is capable of running vimtutor
. For more about the differences between these Vim variants, see the following questions:
- What is the difference between the different vim packages available in Ubuntu
- What features does vim-tiny have?
- Difference between vim-gtk and vim-gnome
- Which vim version can I use?
Solution 2
You need to install vim before using vimtutor!
Run the following command in the Terminal prompt!
sudo apt install vim
Now use vimtutor for learning. Happy Learning!
Related videos on Youtube
dayuloli
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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dayuloli over 1 year
I want to learn
Vim
. The vast majority of people advise me to usevimtutor
. I downloaded the package and ran it, but I just get given a blank screen.I see on Youtube that there should be tons of things on there. But I am not getting it...How can I fix this?
Originally, I was told by the terminal to install
vim-runtime
in order to runvimtutor
, and I did and it ran, albeit with a blank screen. I was able to run this tutorial after I installedvim-gtk
. Anyone know why it didn't show up the first time?-
Panther almost 10 yearsIt is sort of a long-standing problem see bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vim/+bug/255847 Try installing vim (and removing vim-tiny). You may also need to log out and back in for some of your environmental variable to be updated.
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dayuloli almost 10 yearsThank you for the link. I fixed it by installing
vim-gtk
, it was very frustrating though...thanks again for your comment. -
Michael Miller almost 10 years@dayuloli can you post the solution that worked for you as an answer and accept it so this question is no longer listed as unanswered?
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dayuloli almost 10 years@mtmiller I have instead posted the solution that resolved the issue in the question itself, but I still do not know the reason for why it happened. So I will leave it open for now.
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Michael Miller almost 10 years@dayuloli before you installed
vim-gtk
, whatvim*
packages did you have installed? Did you only have thevim-tiny
variant installed? -
dayuloli almost 10 years@mtmiller I had whatever came with ubuntu 14.04. I don't remember installing anything else.
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Mike Lyons over 3 yearsThis solution worked for me and was more immediately useful than the accepted solution. Granted, the accepted solution explained the problem better.