Diving into Neovim: Features, Benefits, and Basics

Neovim is all the rage within the Linux community nowadays, but what is it? How does it differ from traditional Vim? In this video, Jay will give you a basic overview of Neovim and its benefits.

YouTube player

Video Notes

Installation

Download Neovim from here. Releases are available for most manor operating systems.

For those of you that are using a Linux distribution based on Debian/Ubuntu, you can install Neovim by running this command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install neovim

For Ubuntu users, you can obtain a newer version of Neovim by installing it with the following command:

sudo snap install nvim --classic

Other Commands Used

Enable/Disable Line Numbers

To enable line numbers in Neovim, run the following command from command mode:

set number

Disable line numbers:

set nonumber

Installing vim-plug

Run the following command to install vim-plug, a plugin manager that simplifies adding plugins to Neovim.

sh -c 'curl -fLo "${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}"/nvim/site/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim'

init.vim Example

Here’s some sample configuration that you may place inside your init.vim file, to customize Neovim.

set number

call plug#Begin()
    " Color Scheme
    Plug 'EdenEast/nightfox.nvim'
call plug#end()

Activate plugins you may have placed inside your init.vim file by running the following command from within Neovim while in command mode:

:PlugInstall

Video-specific Links

Support Linux Learning