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Q. I am using vim under Ubuntu Linux and whenever I type following command:
syntax on
I’m getting an error which read as follows:
E319: Sorry, the command is not available in this version: syntax on
How do I fix this problem?
A. Vim is a text editor that is upwards compatible to Vi. It can be used to edit all kinds of plain text. It is especially useful for editing programs.
There are a lot of enhancements above Vi: multi level undo, multi windows and buffers, syntax highlighting, command line editing, filename completion, on-line help, visual selection, etc
Ubuntu Linux comes with tiny version of vim.
All you need to do is installed full vim version by typing following command:
$ sudo apt-get install vim
You can add syntax on command to ~/.vimrc file
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- Last Updated: 5-12-08
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Did you even read the question? The answer doesn’t address the question at all.
Actually answers the question.
Ubuntu natively comes with tiny vim. This does not support syntax and other fancy stuff. So if you’ve just installed Ubuntu and run vim, you will get the error reported.
In order to get syntax highlighting and other features, you must install the complete vim via apt-get.
Installing the full vim via apt-get doesn’t help at all. The problem stays as it is.
Installing vim via apt-get solved the problem. Thank you.
Great post, solved my problem, thanks!
Works perfectly – who would have thought – two vim packages.
you should be using vim-tiny that is the default package in Ubuntu.
You should install a more bloated version. :-)
It works. ha ha
Thank you for this post, it worked fine!
solved my problem.
Thank you.
Thank you :-)
I’m running Debian and I came across the same issue. I originally thought I was using some archaic version of vim! This article did the trick.
Works fine. Tk’s
Thank you. I have apt-got vim, and my world is colorful now :)
My Ubuntu 8.10 natively comes with vim-tiny. By installing full vim, now the syntax highlighting works.
The vi command no longer points to /usr/bin/vim.tiny. Instead it now points to /usr/bin/vim.basic
$ readlink -f `which vi`
/usr/bin/vim.basic
$dpkg -S /usr/bin/vim.basic
vim: /usr/bin/vim.basic
Thanks so much Vivek!
Ole! Thanks.
It works, thanks.
Worked for me too. Thanks.
excellent tutorial!
Thanks!
I was getting the same error. Dint know that I was running vim.tiny :D…. Thanx for the post .. Thank you . :)