Interestingly, #FreeBSD comes with #nvi2 in base, while #OpenBSD and #NetBSD seem to be running #nvi 1:

FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE-p12 ~ ~ ~ Version 2.2.2 (2025-10-08) The CSRG, University of California, Berkeley. OpenBSD 7.3 (7.9 is still running the same version) ~ ~ ~ Version 1.79 (10/23/96) The CSRG, University of California, Berkeley. NetBSD 10.1 ~ ~ ~ Version (1.81.6-2013-11-20nb4) The CSRG, University of California, Berkeley.

They all seem to have nvi2 available as packages, though, which #Debian, oddly, does not.

rld@Intrepid:~$ uname -sr FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE-p12 rld@Intrepid:~$ pkg search nvi |grep '^nvi2' nvi2-2.2.2 Updated implementation of the ex/vi text editor rld@Intrepid:~$ #(searching openbsd online) rld@Intrepid:~$ searchall -o nvi |grep ^nvi nvi-2.2.2 (list) with wide and files limited by nvi-2.2.2-iconv (list) with wide and files limited by [email protected]$ uname -sr NetBSD 10.1 [email protected]$ pkgin search nvi |grep ^nvi |grep -v nvidia nvi-1.81.6nb13 Berkeley nvi with additional features nvi-m17n-1.79.20040608nb11 Clone of vi/ex, with multilingual patch nvi2-2.2.0 Multibyte fork of the nvi editor for BSD [email protected]$ ~ $ head -1 /etc/os-release PRETTY_NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie)" ~ $ apt-cache search nvi |grep -E '^nvi2? ' nvi - 4.4BSD re-implementation of vi ~ $
To add Slackware to the list: nvi 1 (1.81.6) was added to -current(15) on Mon Jan 13 00:11:55 UTC 2020, replacing Elvis as the default /usr/bin/vi provider. It shipped in stable with Slackware 15.0 (Feb 2022). It recently merged the Debian patchset, so Slackware and Debian now share most of the nvi 1 fixes.

One nice detail: when nvi was introduced, Elvis was rebuilt to drop its /usr/bin/vi and /usr/bin/ex symlinks, and nvi only provides those symlinks if no other editor already does.

I just added an "NVI ACROSS UNIX SYSTEMS" section to some notes I keep, if anyone's curious:
https://repo.or.cz/code-notes.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/notes/NVI_Editor_Guide.txt

#nvi #vi #slackware
Making sure you're not a bot!

@r1w1s1 FYI xvi is smaller than nvi. https://martinwguy.github.io/xvi/. I haven't benchmarked its speed though.
xvi

@mathew @r1w1s1

Also builds on termux, btw.

@mathew @r1w1s1

Looks neat, although there seems to be no mention of license on the website or in the repo.

For micro visual editors, I was recently introduced to "eh:"
https://codeberg.org/SirWumpus/eh

eh

eh - Edit Here - vi(1) the good parts version is a minimalist version of vi(1). It is an example of the "Buffer Gap" method and supports UTF-8.

Codeberg.org