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Vim Beats Emacs in 'Linux Journal' Reader Survey (linuxjournal.com)

The newly-relaunched Linux Journal is conducting its annual "Reader's Choice Awards," and this month announced the winners for Best Text Editor, Best Laptop, and Best Domain Registrar. Vim was chosen as the best editor by 35% of respondents, handily beating GNU Emacs (19%) Sublime Text (10%) and Atom (8%). Readers' Choice winner Vim is an extremely powerful editor with a user interface based on Bill Joy's 40-plus-year-old vi, but with many improved-upon features including extensive customization with key mappings and plugins. Linux Journal reader David Harrison points out another great thing about Vim "is that it's basically everywhere. It's available on every major platform."
For best laptop their readers picked Lenovo (32%), followed by Dell (25%) and System76 (11%). The ThinkPad began life at IBM, but in 2005, it was purchased by Lenovo along with the rest of IBM's PC business. Lenovo evolved the line, and today the company is well known as a geek favorite. Lenovo's ThinkPads are quiet, fast and arguably have one of the best keyboards (fighting words!). Linux Journal readers say Lenovo's Linux support is excellent, leaving many to ponder why the company doesn't ship laptops with Linux installed.
In February readers also voted on the best web browser, choosing Firefox (57%) over Chrome (17%) and Chromium (7%). And they also voted on the best Linux distribution, ultimately selecting Debian (33%), open SUSE (12%), and Fedora (11%).

2 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Re:To paraphrase... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And easier to use.

    Not easier to use. Just easier to learn.

    You can learn to ride a tricycle easier than a bicycle. But you aren't going to win the Tour de France on a trike.

  2. Re:Ignores the same major issue as emacs: by menkhaura · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Every version is subtly different, and just because you can use the modern version doesn't mean you know the subset of common features that work everywhere."

    You are talking about the many vi clones that exist or existed (nvi, elvis, ex-vi, stevie etc). while the article mentions the One True Editor that came to rule them all, Vim, created by Bram Moolenaar. Today any *nix distribution is guaranteed to have vim available, and there is no such difference of common features anymore.

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