[sf-lug] notes from SF-LUG meeting of Sunday 5 December 2021

[Michael Paoli]

> From: "Bobbie Sellers" <bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com>
> Subject: [sf-lug] notes from SF-LUG meeting of Sunday 5 December 2021
> Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2021 17:12:18 -0800

> Michael P. came in shortly.

I (virtually) arrived very shortly ahead of meeting start time.
There were I think two, maybe 3 folks, already there - including
Bobbie.

> Michael was doing upgrades and maintenance on the machines he is  
> responsible for.
> He did provide a couple of useful tips.

Well, most notably, various random things were discussed / asked about,
Including shell, vim/vi, EMACS, and the collection of various
tips/information on Rick's site.

Some of the bits I included ... I've oft done presentations /
training sessions on shell, and vi, I provided links to
where I have most current versions of those materials:
https://www.mpaoli.net/~michael/unix/sh/
https://www.mpaoli.net/~michael/unix/vi/
And, "of course", I also mentioned vim's annoyances:
https://www.mpaoli.net/~michael/linux/vim/vim_annoyances.txt
... though that might not be of so much interest to most.
I also mentioned, at least approximately, that for the most part,
vim is essentially an extension of vi - adding a whole lot of
(not standard / POSIX) vi stuff.  vim does also have a
"compatible" mode for vi compatibility ... but it's not all
that highly compatible.  But those not so familiar with
the more standard vi or nvi, may not particularly care or
notice - and it may mostly not be important to them.
I also mentioned that vi is highly optimized for use ... not
learning it.  But also, in the grand scheme of things, for most
users of vi (or vim or the like), what will you spend most of
your vi(/vim) time doing?  Learning it, or using it?  Yeah,
generally using it.  So, ... which makes more sense to be much
more highly optimized?  Why using it of course, ... and so it is.
Some folks also mentioned lots of vim tutorials being available,
I think also it's own tutorial software/mode may have also been
mentioned.
There was also bit of mention of ed, pico, and nano.
I also provide the link:
http://linuxmafia.com/kb/
which I believe was being sought after, asking about the
collection of information/articles on Rick's site - and
I also mentioned that it's linked from the site's main
page.
Oh, EMACS ... there was wee bit of discussion on that,
including "of course" the old (semi-true-ish) joke
that EMACS is a perfectly good operating system, that
merely lacks a good text editor.  But EMACS is huge,
and is exceedingly extensible - notably with lisp ... so,
well, lots of folks do that.  It also ends up rather large
as I'd pointed out:
$ (cd /usr/bin && ls -lLs ed vi nvi vim emacs) | sort -bn
    60 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    55424 Jan  3  2019 ed
   472 -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root   476312 Dec  4  2018 nvi
   472 -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root   476312 Dec  4  2018 vi
  2648 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2704360 Jun 15  2019 vim
39036 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 39926024 Jan 22  2021 emacs
$
(on the above example host of mine, vi is nvi rather than vim,
hence they match).
I also mention someone I know who used to be a quite regular attendee
of BUUG.org, knew vi, and also quite taught himself EMACS too, at
least well to the point of being quite proficient with both ...
and used both quite a bit.  And after some time, he concluded that
vi was the better text editor.  Most notably with EMACS, there's a
whole lot of use of the Meta key - so it's not so
efficient/fast/easy - nor quite as ergonomic - on keyboard usage.

Oh, I also made mention of Aruba Wi-Fi access points still being
available as free giveaways - while they last:
https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:offered_wanted_hardware_etc

Also was mentioned - perhaps after 1pm,
if one would like to attend a LUG tomorrow/Monday:
KWLUG - Kitchener-Waterloo Linux User Group
meets (at least also including virtually)
tomorrow (Monday).
See, e.g.:
https://kwlug.org/
https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:covid-19#beyond_us
https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:covid-19#timezone_conversion

> Victor has dug out an old 32 bit Inspiron installed with some  
> variety of Linux
> and is doing what he can on it.  He is doing what he called Creative Writing
> on the device which went into a discussion of which text editor to use with
> MaxEd as a new entry in the discussion which revolved basically around Vi,
> Vim, gvim, and emacs with mentions of Ed and edit and line-ed.