Neovim — The Complete Guide: A Modern Vim with Lua and LSP, Even on Remote Servers
Neovim keeps everything people like about Vim — modal editing and fast keyboard commands — and adds a modern base: configuration and plugins in Lua, a built-in LSP client and Tree-sitter for accurate syntax highlighting. It is open source, completely free and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Neovim
Neovim project
A modern Vim with built-in Lua, LSP and Tree-sitter — a fast keyboard-driven editor that also works in a terminal and on remote servers.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Modal editing — short commands to move, delete and replace without a mouse.
- LSP client — completion and code checking for Python, C and other languages.
- Tree-sitter — highlighting and folding that understand the structure of the code.
- Lua — one configuration file you can keep in Git and copy to any machine.
- Terminal work — the same environment on a remote server over SSH.
How to get started
Run the :Tutor command for a built-in lesson. Instead of building a configuration from scratch, you can start from a ready-made community config and change it gradually. Expect a few weeks of slower work until the keystrokes become second nature.
Related tools
For the original editor that is installed on almost every server — Vim. For an editor you can extend without limits — GNU Emacs. For a fast graphical editor — Zed.
Vim
Vim project (Bram Moolenaar, now maintained by Christian Brabandt and contributors)
The classic modal text editor installed on almost every Unix system — fast, light and suited to terminal and server work.
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GNU Emacs
Free Software Foundation (GNU Project)
An almost endlessly extensible editor, with Org mode for notes and tasks, AUCTeX for LaTeX, Magit for Git and more.
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Zed
Zed Industries
Very fast open-source code editor with built-in LSP, real-time collaborative editing and optional AI.
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Visual Studio Code
Microsoft
Free code editor with a huge extension library, built-in terminal, Git and debugger — for Python, scripts, CSV, LaTeX and more.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
It takes effort to learn, but once you do, you get a fast editor that behaves the same on your laptop and on the server.