Unable to edit git commit message with newly installed git

Git allows the user to provied commit messages either via a command line argument or by opening a text editor with a commit message file that the user can freely edit. The obvious benefit of the latter is that one can use all the functionality of the chosen text editor and it is in general easier to write proper commit messages than when simply supplying the message via a command line argument. When freshly installing git on a linux system, the git command line client assumes that the vi text editor is installed and will try to use it to let users edit the commit messages. But if one does not have vi installed the git client is unable to find the vi executbale and thus will display an error message stating that git is unable to find the specified programm to open.