Question

Is there a way to open vim in a new shell window or tab? I’m used to doing $ mate file, which opens the file in a new window.

I prefer having one ‘central shell’ where I issue commands and edit files in other windows or tabs, as necessary. How do people normally open vim files locally?

Answer 1

Check out gVim. You can launch that in its own window.

gVim makes it really easy to manage multiple open buffers graphically.

You can also do the usual :e to open a new file, CTRL+^ to toggle between buffers, etc…

Another cool feature lets you open a popup window that lists all the buffers you’ve worked on.

This allows you to switch between open buffers with a single click.

To do this, click on the Buffers menu at the top and click the dotted line with the scissors.

Otherwise you can just open a new tab from your terminal session and launch vi from there.

You can usually open a new tab from terminal with CTRL+T or CTRL+ALT+T

Once vi is launched, it’s easy to open new files and switch between them.