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Programming Software Open Source

Vim 9.2 Released (linuxiac.com) 116

Posted by EditorDavid from the esc-:q! dept.
"More than two years after the last major 9.1 release, the Vim project has announced Vim 9.2," reports the blog Linuxiac: A big part of this update focuses on improving Vim9 Script as Vim 9.2 adds support for enums, generic functions, and tuple types.

On top of that, you can now use built-in functions as methods, and class handling includes features like protected constructors with _new(). The :defcompile command has also been improved to fully compile methods, which boosts performance and consistency in Vim9 scripts.

Insert mode completion now includes fuzzy matching, so you get more flexible suggestions without extra plugins. You can also complete words from registers using CTRL-X CTRL-R. New completeopt flags like nosort and nearest give you more control over how matches are shown. Vim 9.2 also makes diff mode better by improving how differences are lined up and shown, especially in complex cases.
Plus on Linux and Unix-like systems, Vim "now adheres to the XDG Base Directory Specification, using $HOME/.config/vim for user configuration," according to the release notes.

And Phoronix Mcites more new features: Vim 9.2 features "full support" for Wayland with its UI and clipboard handling. The Wayland support is considered experimental in this release but it should be in good shape overall...

Vim 9.2 also brings a new vertical tab panel alternative to the horizontal tab line.

The Microsoft Windows GUI for Vim now also has native dark mode support.
You can find the new release on Vim's "Download" page.
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Vim 9.2 Released More

Vim 9.2 Released

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  • Still developed (Score:4, Funny)

    by allo ( 1728082 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @08:35AM (#65990160)

    They cannot quit development.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by habig ( 12787 )
      they're trying hard to get to the vii-th release, been stuck on vi for years.

    • Re:Still developed (Score:5, Funny)

      by SchroedingersCat ( 583063 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @12:32PM (#65990424)
      If they keep at it, they will eventually implement emacs.

  • Refreshing Update (Score:4, Insightful)

    by crunchy_one ( 1047426 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @08:46AM (#65990170)
    Thankfully, vim has received some useful enhancements in its latest release.

    The same can't be said for many commercial products that have had so many AI doodads crammed in that they look, and are just as useful, as a night out in Vegas.

  • Sticky notes on the wall (Score:3)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @09:16AM (#65990186) Homepage

    This reminds me of the mid-1990s, when vi / vim was the best editor around. (Or was it emacs???) Anyway, I used to write down on a sticky note, command sequences I was trying to memorize, and stick it to the wall next to my desk. When I got one command sequence down, I'd pick another one, so I didn't have to keep looking at man pages. For years, vim was one of very few editors that could do regex search and replace, and that alone kept me using it for a long time. But these days, most decent editors, like Notepad++, can do pretty much everything vim could do, so I finally quit installing it. AND I don't have to write down command sequences on sticky notes any more, because there is, you know, a GUI.

    • Re: Sticky notes on the wall (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @10:03AM (#65990244) Homepage

      Yeah, that GUi will be useful on an ssh connection.

      • In the GUI world, we have Remote Desktop.

        • Not to decent servers.

          • I suppose it depends on how you define "decent." If decent means, "servers with no GUI" then of course you are right.

            • I suppose it depends on how you define "decent." If decent means, "servers with no GUI" then of course you are right.

              Computer folk, when expressing a preference, often frame their argument in utilitarian terms, when the actual motivation is on more of an emotional level - It just feels cool.

              I remember getting a Japan-only linux-based Zaurus SL-A300 [ndl.go.jp] in the early 2000s. It was a small hand held PDA. For me, the best think about it was you could install a terminal on it and run the familiar unix commands on a machine in your hand. I probably thought for a while about how I might defend this as being "useful" in some way, but

              • Yep, I remember some of the old Radio Shack pocket computers that were really a fancy calculator, but you could type BASIC commands into them. They were cool and fun, but never very useful!

        • In the GUI world, we have Remote Desktop.

          You're assuming the server is installed and the port open; neither of which may be true.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        Yeah, that GUi will be useful on an ssh connection.

        I access my VNC GUI through a ssh connection, option: -L5901:127.0.0.1:5901

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Viol8 ( 599362 )

          Now try that in a on-demand docker container running on a restricted EC2 instance.

        • Get something like Remmina that handles building the ssh tunnel for you, that way you don't need to manually juggle local port numbers.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ls671 ( 1122017 )

            Yeah I remember trying something else which did just that, forgot the name right now, but anyways I found it glitchy and buggy thus less reliable. Oh! I do now X2GO or something like that.

            Anyway, I obviously don't enter the -L manually every time and use a couple lines bash script instead.

            MaybeRemmina is better, can you really vouch for it? It'd be handy for my customers and users in general.

            -Thanks

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ls671 ( 1122017 )

              Also, I remember I put a lot of hope in X2GO for regular windows users but experienced the same inconsistencies either on Linux, windows, mac. So ended up bundling ssh, vnc and a batch script instead to them.

              Do you have any useful experience with that with a reasonable sample of regular users to provide any direction?

              Thanks in advance,

      • Yeah, that GUi will be useful on an ssh connection.

        You can forward X over SSH.

        ssh -Y <remote host>

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Yes with the NppVim plugin installed, Notepad++ can pretty much do everything vim can do.

      Yes GUIs are quite useful, even for editors. gVim has a very nice one that does a good job of exposing features through the GUI without removing the power of the vim's command mode.

      Fortunately all the good editors out there have plugins or bindings available to implement vim keyboard bindings, at least enough of it to be fast and comfortable. In fact I just recently learned about the VibreOffice plugin for LibreOffice,

      • From what I read on NppVim's GitHub page, and it looks like it mainly lets you pretend you are in Vim while in NPP. In other words, use Vim-style keystroke commands. This misses the point of using a GUI editor. Sure, you can make it react to all those keystrokes you memorized while learning to use Vim, but native NPP is capable of doing pretty much all of the actual editing *tasks* that Vim could do, but without having to memorize keystrokes. Oh, sure, there are probably some things NppVim adds that are act

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by caseih ( 160668 )

          I think you miss the point of having vim key bindings. To me an editor is unusable without them, or at least a lot less usable. Obviously I can get by with a "normal" editor, but it really hurts my efficiency. Even something as simple as yanking or replacing a word (or words) is painful in a conventional editor compared to the speed and ease with which I can do it with vim-like commands. (You want me to shift arrow key and highlight like an animal when a couple of keystrokes can do it?) And the ability t

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by caseih ( 160668 )

            But mostly my comment about NppVim was tongue in cheek since my position is an editor without vim key bindings cannot do what vim can do!

          • It's what you get used to, more than anything. In NPP you can do just about everything with key presses, just slightly different key presses than VIM.

            You mentioned shift-arrow. Yeah, that's painful. But shift+ctrl+arrow highlights a whole word at a time, or shift+home or shift+end selects from where you are to the beginning or end of the line, add ctrl and you to to the beginning or end of the text. There are a ton more shift combinations for selecting various ranges of text, and they're a whole lot more in

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by piojo ( 995934 )

              Having resisted the vim plugins in IDEs for several years, I don't think you can get around just as easily without, and certainly not in a web browser text box. Simple editors (and even Notepad++) don't do things like selecting/changing text within brackets, deleting/copying/modifying text until the next comma (or semicolon, etc), navigation/action to the next sentence or the start of this sentence, and quick and easy repeated actions. That's not to mention the capabilities I don't use every day, like multi

    • I've used nix all my life. One of my favorite sequences is

      find . -type f -exec grep foo {} /dev/null \;

      Took me awhile to be able to remember that and even aliased it for awhile. Now it is like my right hand.

      • You must have really wanted to find files *somewhere* that had "foo" in them!

        • All the time:) Find is a great swiss army knife. Unfortunately I do have to refer to the man page to do stuff like restrict the time range. I do use the -name option quite often with either \*.h or \*.c depending on what I am looking for.

          • I'd say that File Explorer in Windows has great search capabilities, but I'd be lying. Microsoft search has always sucked. I often resort to bash or (for simpler searches) good old dir, to find files. For searches within file contents, NPP has excellent Find In Files capabilities, organizing the results in a nice, readable format. It will even let you click through to an instance of found text, and take you directly to the file and place the cursor on the line where it found the text. Pretty cool, and not s

            • I've used nix for a very very long time. I am just more comfortable with command line for everything. Constructing search conditions for me is so much easier as a equation than as a gui with fields. The gui usually just cannot comport to what I really want to do. If I wanted to edit the list of files, I'd just pipe the find result into a file and use the file to open the set of files of interest.

              I've never used windows beyond trying to help friends who somehow believe a nix guy can help them. I usually can

    • :wq

  • Incredible (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @09:29AM (#65990202)

    It's incredible, to me, that Vim is still under any sort of development. I would not have thought that it would need anything further.

    • Well they need to update it to keep it running on modern machines.
      But new features? That indeed also wonders me.

      • But new features? That indeed also wonders me.

        I don't know about 9, but a relatively recent (in terms of vi(m)'s age) would be async connections to external subprocesses. This allows things like the LSP integration which allows things like ALE plugin which gives realtime linter feedback in the editor. Like syntax highlighting but much deeper.

        It's really useful!

      • That indeed also wonders me.

        Wow, I haven't heard that grammatical construction for ages; Pennsylvania Dutch dialect.

        Either you've spent a lot of time in central Pennsylvania, or you speak a language that use German grammatical rules.

        • That indeed also wonders me.

          Wow, I haven't heard that grammatical construction for ages; Pennsylvania Dutch dialect.

          Either you've spent a lot of time in central Pennsylvania, or you speak a language that use German grammatical rules.

          Yes - Archaic or disappearing forms have a certain beauty.
          Who so beset him round with dismal stories...

          A dare to the Slashdot crowd: In your next work email raising some issue or another, describe yourself have as having been "beset round", or "vexed".

        • Considering the user name (Dutch for little tiger), it's probably the latter.
    • No AI?

  • Vim Startup (Score:3)

    by Skjellifetti2 ( 7600738 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @12:11PM (#65990400)

    Vim "now adheres to the XDG Base Directory Specification, using $HOME/.config/vim for user configuration,"

    My vim config is in a bash startup file:

    alias vim=/usr/bin/emacs

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Blasphemy! :)

      Of course you could just set EDITOR...

    • alias vim=/usr/bin/emacs

      Have you realized yet someone did 'ln -s /usr/bin/gvim /usr/bin/emacs"?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thogard ( 43403 )

      In the vi vs emacs wars, there is only one real point to argue and that is the cat index. Get a cat on the keyboard and see how much damage it can do to the file.

  • Why would a CLI program need to offer "Wayland support"?

  • I just upgraded from 9.1 to 9.2 after reading this article. I hate apps that pollute my home with config files rather than putting them in ~/.config. I deleted my ~/.vim* and started vim and it immediately made a new ~/.viminfo, what gives?!

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