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After using Vim for few years a realised that I can do this faster without the mouse.

Is it possible to customise/configure Ubuntu to have Vim-like features?

3 Answers 3

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You just opened a nice can of worms there. The question is, how far down the hole do you want to go?

So first you have your desktop yourself. By default, you have gnome, and that's great and all. If you're looking to go more keyboard friendly though, check out alternative window managers. I'm a big fan of tiling window managers like AwesomeWM and Xmonad. These allow you to move, resize, and jump around much more keyboard friendly.

Next up, you have your terminal you use. Bash is the default there, and you can set it to enable vim movements/commands while you're working in the terminal. I find ZSH (alternative to bash) has much better Vim mode support, so I use it on a daily basis.

Next up you get to other tools. As Jorge mentions, there are plugins for Firefox and Chrome that will enable some keyboard friendly, vim-like functionality.

We also have other programs that are more vim-like. For instance, mutt is a command line email program that has vim-like commands. You use j/k to move through messages, can set vim as your email composition tool, and get to tweak the setup.

Finally, you can look to do more things in vim itself. Rather than use gwibber, you can install the twitvim plugin and use that for doing your social media stuff.

I don't go into too many details because you just ask if it's possible. The answer is, definitely! It's not just a flip of the switch though, and it can take quite some time to learn and get used to all of the tools out there that help with the keyboard-friendly OS mission.

4

Vimperator is a popular extension that makes Firefox vim-like.

0

Are you after a tiling window manager http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager

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