Post by @JdeBP__dup_33984@mastodonapp.uk

2026-02-11 12:03 UTC

People waxing lyrical about using 'original vi', both nowadays in 2026 and back in 2006, haven't a clue what that is. There's only one family of operating systems where 'vi' will actually run the original vi program by Joy, Horton, et al.: #Illumos and its derivatives #Tribblix, #OmniOS, and #SmartOS. *Everyone else* uses one of the ground-up clones. On #FreeBSD, #OpenBSD, and #NetBSD, it's Bostic's early 1990s #nvi, which was derived from Kirkendall's elvis, a clone written some time around 1990. On Linux-based operating systems, vi either is Bostic nvi, or is one of the derivatives of STEVIE (the middle-1980s vi clone for the Atari ST that inspired Kirkendall to write elvis in the first place): Moolenaar's VIM or NeoVIM. On none of those will you get original Joy+Horton vi in base, or indeed packaged/in ports. Yes, Heirloom vi exists, which is Ritter's 2002 fork of 1985 Joy+Horton vi. But it's not even available in Arch Linux nowadays. #vi #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory

Replies (6)

@JdeBP__dup_33984@mastodonapp.uk 2026-02-11 12:33

On #Illumos, Jov vi is in /usr/src/cmd/vi: https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/tree/master/usr/src/cmd/vi On #OpenBSD, Bostic #nvi is in /usr/src/usr.bin/vi/vi; #NetBSD having it in /usr/src/external/bsd/nvi; and #FreeBSD in /usr/src/contrib/nvi: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/tree/main/contrib/nvi FreeBSD has an nvi2 in ports: https://freshports.org/editors/nvi2/ OpenBSD has elvis in ports: https://github.com/openbsd/ports/blob/master/editors/elvis/pkg/DESCR Ritter's Heirloom vi is on SourceForge: https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net STEVIE was posted to comp.sources.unix in 1988: https://sources.vsta.org/comp.sources.unix/volume15/stevie/ Unfortunately, Sven Guckes's vi Clones WWW site was never completed with some of this, notably lacking Heirloom vi, for example. https://guckes.net/vi/clones.html But it does mention oft-overlooked commercial clones such as Watcom's vi, a from-scratch implementation started in 1983 that is also now source-available: https://github.com/open-watcom/owp4v1copy/tree/master/bld/vi #vi #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory #STEVIE #elvis #VIM #NeoVIM #Watcom #OpenWatcom

Open ##256999
@olbohlen@norden.social 2026-02-11 13:23

@JdeBP on #OpenIndiana you would call /usr/has/bin/vi

Open ##1351998
@gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe 2026-02-11 13:56

@JdeBP @joel My first test of "is it real vi" is to try open mode¹ :open It's like normal-mode, usually for use on a hardcopy output device but with more interactivity than ex(1). Pretty much none of the modern vi clones implement this functionality (or they overload :open to mean something else). ⸻ ¹ https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/ex.html#tag_20_40_13_29

Open ##1351999
@davefischer@hachyderm.io 2026-02-11 16:05

@JdeBP vi was my editor from 1987 until 2023. I tried to stick with "original" vi, but I'm not sure I always succeeded. For most of the 00's that was under Solaris 8, and the last few years under linux it took hunting down an obscure tar file and compiling it. And I do keep some traditional vi docs handy:

Open ##1352002
@paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange 2026-02-22 03:50

@JdeBP personally, i'm always happy to run code keith bostic did. i liked what the UCB project did and i really liked BSDi.

Open ##1352003
@darthnull@infosec.exchange 2026-02-22 17:48

@JdeBP @paul_ipv6 I first started using vi in the early 90s (because our servers didnt have emacs :) ). What would have come with SunOS 4? Since then, I’m sure it’s been solidly vim.

Open ##1352004