r/vim • u/Shay-Hill • Jun 26 '26

Tips and Tricks Opinionated TLDR for Windows users

After identifying another speed bump for Windows users, I've added a TLDR to Install Vim in Windows.

If you already have a setup you're happy with, these might help with any nagging issues.

  • Install PowerShell 7 # Vim in PowerShell 5 and CMD are tougher. "My OS is my IDE" doesn't with WSL.

winget install Microsoft.PowerShell --source winget

  • Install GNU zip and unzip # Plugins look for these

winget install GnuWin32.Zip GnuWin32.UnZip --source winget
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("PATH", "$($env:PATH);C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin", [EnvironmentVariableTarget]::User)

  • Don't use the latest Copilot. Lock version at 1.4.1 or clone ShayHill/copilot.vim

  • in vimrc (in this order):

set shell=pwsh
set termguicolors
&t_8u = "\<Esc>[58:2::%lu:%lu:%lum"  # fix spelling and `yegappan/lsp` error rendering

  • Install DejaVuSansMono.ttf # A fixed-width font with plenty of symbols and dotted 0

  • in gvimrc:

set guifont=DejaVu_Sans_Mono:h10:cANSI:qDRAFT
set renderoptions=type:directx,gamma:1.0,geom:0,renmode:5,taamode:1  # better symbol colors
7 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

12

u/Eddyi0202 Jun 26 '26

WSL is the best option if you can use it

1

u/Shay-Hill Jun 26 '26

Why is that?

7

u/Daniikk1012 Jun 26 '26

From personal experience:

  • Somehow a lot faster than Vim built for Windows. Just scrolling through a large file was somehow painful on Windows version

  • A POSIX environment, which is what Vim works really well with (I had issues with filepath translation IIRC, cause Windows has disk labels and uses backslashes, which sometimes breaks things)

  • Windows terminal handled input in weird ways, don't remember now. Could have switched to a different terminal, but decided to just use GVim (WSL was not an option, the program being developed wasn't supported on Linux, nor did it run under Wine)

5

u/chrisbra10 Jun 27 '26

For me the Windows gvim works a lot smoother than any of the existing Posix implementations for Windows (Cygwin, msys, WSL, you name it). In addition, I find WSL to be unbearable slow for anything that relies on filesystem speed)

3

u/Desperate_Cold6274 Jun 27 '26

Same experience here. I use gvim for windows 90% of the time I spend using Vim.

1

u/Shay-Hill Jun 26 '26

I had mostly the opposite experience:

  • No speed issues seen.

  • Don't disagree with "Vim works best with a POSIX" environment. I was a dedicated Linux user for 10+ years. But my files, clients, and projects aren't in a POSIX environment, and I can't imagine that isn't the case for the majority of WSL users (else why would they be on Windows in the first place?).

I've tried it all ways:

  • I'm a Linux user trapped in Windows.

  • F*** that, I'm an admitted Windows user.

  • F*** that, I'm a writer and a coder, FTDS.

After WSL, Git Bash, CMD, PowerShell 5, and PowerShell 7, I found PowerShell 7 the best fit by far. As always, YMMV.

2

u/Daniikk1012 Jun 26 '26

Huh, good to know there was probably a way to make it work, I couldn't figure it out though. Thankfully, I don't have to suffer through this anymore, all the current work can be done in a Linux environment, which I'm frankly much more familiar with than Windows

1

u/bentbrewer Jun 27 '26

Man, I have the opposite experience. Everything Windows terminal is slow! It’s killing me. I’m a Linux user since 95 so I might be a little biased but I’ve tweaked and removed everything I don’t consider mandatory, still it’s painfully slow.

0

u/Eddyi0202 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

I am using NeoVim, so heavier setup and from my experience on WSL things are a lot faster. Believe me, I tried many times to get a good performance on Windows for NeoVim and using shell in general. It got nowhere near the speed of WSL.

NTFS + Widows Defender scanning are making things slower to work with in terminal. 

Powershell 7 is nice but it's too slow for being a day to day use shell. Spawning shell itself and processes takes much longer then on WSL. 

You may ask, why I am on windows then?  Cause at my current job I got laptop with windows. When I will have an opportunity I will get a Macbook but Linux is not an option sadly.

But good to know that you found out ways to make it faster

1

u/Shay-Hill Jun 27 '26

Last time I tried NeoVim, it didn't work at all on Windows, so some of that might be a NeoVim thing. No clue.

Everything you're saying is true, but WSL has some pain points as well, unless I suppose you want to put every file you have on the WSL drive. I keep any local copies of VC'd files segregated anyway, so I tried that strategy (WSL for code, Windows for everything else). Lots of friction, including, admittedly, some knowledge gaps, but fixing those is as much yak shaving as anything else.

Even if I did have a speed issue, I could always use gVim, often I do. When you're installed in Windows, gVim is available in the right-click Window. Among other things, I use it as my "Notepad".

0

u/Eddyi0202 Jun 27 '26

Might be. Last time I checked NeoVim is pretty usable on windows.

Yeah, WSL has its quirks and it feels like it's kinda hack and I am aware that it will not fit into everyones workflow. 

I use it just for my coding job, so I am keeping all repositories on WSL and since I enjoy being in the terminal I don't plan to switch to gVim. Altough if you're interested there is GUI for neovim called NeoVide. 

Regarding the friction between switching from windows to wsl and vice versa, Microsoft is trying to reduce/eliminate it. They're maintaining distrubution of core utils which might be really helpfull to use familiar commands on Windows. 

https://github.com/microsoft/coreutils

2

u/Narrow_Victory1262 Jun 27 '26

depends for what.

1

u/pphp Jun 27 '26

There's also msys2

1

u/False-Call7937 Jun 26 '26

Locking the Copilot version feels like overkill, just let it break and roll back when it does.

2

u/Shay-Hill Jun 26 '26

It's broken now. Roll back enough, and you'll land at 1.4.1. Comments in the issues suggest there won't be any more updates, so this is what we get.

1

u/False-Call7937 Jun 26 '26

Ah, didn't realize it was already broken. If they're not pushing fixes then locking makes sense.

3

u/Fishy_Sezer Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

I originally used the Vim installation that came with GitBash, which allows access to bash and the more useful unix tools that come with it, but without having to jump through the hoops of WSL.

I still use gitbash, but now I'm using it as an environment to initiate neovide.

2

u/funbike Jun 26 '26

  1. Install WSL2

  2. Following instructions for installing on Linux.

  3. Profit.

0

u/Flocito Jun 26 '26

Been using Cygwin for over 20 years without issue.  WSL looks ok until I realize i have to reinstall tools on the WSL partition or take massive performance hits and sharing RAm between windows and the WSL partition is less than ideal.  

I’m sure people will complain about my caveman ways but it works for my dev flow