Why is my vimtutor blank?

Question

I want to learn Vim. The vast majority of people advise me to use vimtutor. 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 run vimtutor, and I did and it ran, albeit with a blank screen. I was able to run this tutorial after I installed vim-gtk. Anyone know why it didn't show up the first time?

Answer 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:

• vim
• vim-athena
• vim-gnome
• vim-gtk
• vim-nox

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?

Answer 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!