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I recently installed vim on Ubuntu (14.04) with Unity. As it turns out, vim does not support yanking text to the clipboard (usind + or *). I read here that I have to install GVim in order to add this capability to vim.

Using apt-cache search I did not find a package named gvim but the two packages vim-gnome and vim-gtk. As I understand it, those are two different types of graphical interface. Since I use Ubuntu with Unity, I am unsure which one is suitable for me.

What exactly are the differences between those two packages and which one can I use?

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schtandard
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1 Answers1

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The two packages are mostly the same. Both will work perfectly fine with the Unity desktop.

One difference is the set of libraries that they are linked with for the GVim's graphical components, so the look of buttons, menus, and file dialogs may be different.

Another difference is desktop session support. According to Vim's description of its GNOME GUI, the vim-gnome version should save and restore its session when logging out of a desktop session, and prompt about unsaved files as well.

See this answer for a complete list of all available vim-* packages.

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Michael Miller
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