I went to startup vim just now because I wanted to see the charity
solicitation message that runs when it starts up. Turns out I don't have vim
proper installed.
$ vim
Command 'vim' not found, but can be installed with:
sudo apt install vim
sudo apt install vim-gtk3
sudo apt install vim-tiny
sudo apt install neovim
sudo apt install vim-athena
sudo apt install vim-gtk
sudo apt install vim-nox
I do have a vi installed, though, as one expects pretty much everywhere
these days. It was then just a question of which vi I do have installed.
$ which vi
/usr/bin/vi
$ ls -ldh /usr/bin/vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Jun 27 2018 /usr/bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi
$ ls -ldh /etc/alternatives/vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Jun 27 2018 /etc/alternatives/vi -> /usr/bin/vim.tiny
$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/vim.tiny
vim-tiny: /usr/bin/vim.tiny
$
So, I thought this would make a nice little post demonstrating the steps one
takes to figure this sort of thing out, navigating the Debian alternatives
mechanism and dpkg tool to tie a binary to a package name.