How To Install Latest Vim On Ubuntu

Vim is considered as one of the best terminal-based text editors for Linux. It is a highly configurable command line text editor that could be your best friend when you go all command line.

It provides syntax highlighting for a number of programming languages, has an extensive range of plugins and supports a wide range of file formats.

An interesting fact here, Vim is older than Linux. The work on Vim was started in the year 1988. Vim is actually based on another command line text editor, Vi (which itself is based on ed, the first text editor for Unix).

Vim was launched as “Vi IMitation” but later the acronym was changed to “Vi IMproved”.

You can install Vim on Ubuntu at any given time using the following command:

sudo apt install vim

The one major problem with this approach is that you won’t get the latest Vim version.

Let me discuss the features in the newer Vim release and then I’ll show you how to install latest Vim on Ubuntu.

New features in Vim 8.2

Here, I give an overview of the features offered by Vim including some of its latest additions:

• Support for Pop Up Windows (you can be notified about a background build by getting a pop-up message without interrupting your work)
• Support for asynchronous I/O, channels, JSON
• Jobs
• Lambdas and Closures
• Partials
• Timers (asynchronous)
• Packages
• New style testing
• Viminfo merged by timestamp
• Support for GTK+ 3
• DirectX support for Microsoft users

You can read the entire changelog here.

Installing Vim 8.2 on Ubuntu 18.04 and other distros

The good news for Ubuntu users is that they have an unofficial PPA that they can use to easily install the latest version of Vim available.

All you have to do is to use the following commands in a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/vim
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vim

That’s all. If you want to uninstall it, use the commands below:

sudo apt remove vim
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:jonathonf/vim

If you do not want to use the unofficial PPA, you can always use the git client or build it from the source.

You can also install it easily using the command:

sudo apt install vim

However, you will not get the latest version available quickly with this method – you might end up installing the previous version.

Download Vim 8.2

You might also find packages available for your Linux distributions (it takes a while to have the latest version available).

You can take a look at the official download page to know more about available packages and installation methods for your Linux distro.

In either case, you can also take a look at their GitHub page for the releases.

If you are new to Vim, maybe you should download some Vim cheat sheets. You may also try these pro vim tricks.

Already installed Vim 8.2? How is your experience with it? Which Vim 8.2 feature do you like the most? Do share your views in the comments below.