On many systems vi is a link to vim. My ubuntu laptop for example: $ which vi /usr/bin/vi $ file /usr/bin/vi /usr/bin/vi: symbolic link to /etc/alterna

On many systems vi is a link to vim. My ubuntu laptop for example: $ which vi /usr/bin/vi $ file /usr/bin/vi /usr/bin/vi: symbolic link to /etc/alternatives/vi $ file /etc/alternatives/vi /etc/alternatives/vi: symbolic link to /usr/bin/vim.nox One thing that springs to mind, I don't believe native vi supports ":split"? Does it do syntax highlighting? The manpage on my laptop says There are a lot of enhancements above Vi: multi level undo, multi windows and buffers, syntax highlighting, command line editing, filename completion, on-line help, visual selection, etc.. See ":help vi_diff.txt" for a summary of the differences between Vim and Vi. Full list at https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/doc/vi_diff.txt https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/doc/vi_diff.t... (which has nice syntax highlighting in vim)