One of the necessary evils of the *nix world is vi (or more preferably vim.) Suse 9.2 has been a wonderful distrobution for me to use; but one of the HUGE annoyances of it is the busted-ass-pain-in-the-butt way Suse 9.2’s Vim handles the backspace key. You would think that the backspace key… ya know.. deletes stuff to the left of your cursor. Well in Vim on Suse 9.2 you would be wrong.
For some reason that continues to remain a mystery to me, Suse has decided that the backspace key should beep at me. Its not enough that the key would not work, but it actually has to annoy me with loud beeping noises. A quick check with the vi homepage FAQ shows that the correct behavior of the backspace key is… to delete stuff to the left of the cursor (will wonders never cease.) In fact they are so infuriated by this change of behavior (justifiable, I might add) that they have created a vim command to fix any problems vendors may have introduced into the beloved backspace key.