It's a beautiful day, you're learning how to use the terminal. You've never used it before. It seems pretty cool and you feel like a hacker or something. You'd like to edit a text file using ''just'' the terminal. Your friend said just type "vim textfile.txt."
[[type vim textfile.txt]]You type it and press enter. Nice! It shows the text file in the terminal. You use the arrows to navigate to the part of the text you'd like to edit.
[[Start typing]]But nothing happens. Your computer makes some noises that indicate that you're doing something wrong. You wonder wtf is going on. You can't seem to do anything. No matter what key you press nothing happens. The screen just shows the text and file name. You have no idea what to do.
[[just press the X on the terminal window to close it]]
[[google "how to exit vim"]]You just click the x and close the window. You've lost what you were doing before in the terminal. You have to open a new terminal and navigate back to the directory you were in, and you can't remember the path. You hope this never happens again. You google "how to exit vim". The snippet on the top says "In order to exit Vim, you can exit while you are in either the ex mode or in the command mode. You cannot exit Vim when you are in input mode. You need to be sure that you are in the Command mode. To do that, simply press the Esc key."
[[press the Esc key]]
[[look at the next google result]]You press the esc key. Nothing happens except that infernal noise.
[[look at the next google result]]
[[just press the X on the terminal window to close it]] The next article is titled "How to Exit (Quit) Linux Vim/Vi editor". You follow the steps. It says to press the esc key. You do but nothing happens.
[[just do the next step anyway]]
[[just press the X on the terminal window to close it]] Step 2 says "You should see the ––INSERT–– label vanish from the lower-left." Well you definitely didn't see that. Also what the heck does that mean.
[[Go to step 3 anyway]]
[[just press the X on the terminal window to close it]] It says type "To save your changes before you exit, type :w , and then Enter." But you don't want to save. You just want to leave!
[[Type :w enter anyways]]
[[just press the X on the terminal window to close it]] It did something? Maybe it was successful? You just hope the file you're editing isn't super important because you don't really know what you just did. The next step says "To exit Vi/Vim, type :q and hit Enter."
[[Type :q and hit enter]]
[[just press the X on the terminal window to close it]] OMG you've successfully exited vim! You really don't know what happens but you are finally free from the empty senseless horror that had enveloped your entire terminal.
↶↷It's a beautiful day, you're learning how to use the terminal. You've never used it before. It seems pretty cool and you feel like a hacker or something. You'd like to edit a text file using just the terminal. Your friend said just type "vim textfile.txt."
type vim textfile.txt