Nate gives a nice script to preview Markdown files in Vim:

http://blog.natesilva.com/post/5256838248/how-to-preview-a-markdown-document-in-vim

But he hasn’t tested it on Linux. Minor changes will make it work on Linux.

  1. Change open to xdg-open.
  2. Add a redraw! command in the end (in case some terminals don’t automatically redraw).

The modified version is shown below. I like to use rather than comma, but you're free to change it.

"
" While editing a Markdown document in Vim, preview it in the
" default browser.
"
" Author: Nate Silva
"
" To install: Place markdown.vim in ~/.vim/ftplugin or
" %USERPROFILE%\vimfiles\ftplugin.
"
" To use: While editing a Markdown file, press '\a' (backslash a)
"
" Tested on Windows and Mac OS X. Should work on Linux if you set
" BROWSER_COMMAND properly.
"
" Requires the `markdown` command to be on the system path. If you
" do not have the `markdown` command, install one of the following:
"
" http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~orc/Code/discount/
" http://www.freewisdom.org/projects/python-markdown/
"
function!PreviewMarkdown()
    " **************************************************************
    " Configurable settings

    let MARKDOWN_COMMAND = 'markdown'

    if has('win32')
        " note important extra pair of double-quotes
        let BROWSER_COMMAND = 'cmd.exe /c start ""'
    else
        let BROWSER_COMMAND = 'xdg-open'
    endif

    " End of configurable settings
    " **************************************************************

    silent update
    let output_name = tempname() . '.html'

    " Some Markdown implementations, especially the Python one,
    " work best with UTF-8. If our buffer is not in UTF-8, convert
    " it before running Markdown, then convert it back.
    let original_encoding = &fileencoding
    let original_bomb = &bomb
    if original_encoding != 'utf-8' || original_bomb == 1
        set nobomb
        set fileencoding=utf-8
        silent update
    endif

    " Write the HTML header. Do a CSS reset, followed by setting up
    " some basic styles from YUI, so the output looks nice.
    let file_header = ['<html>', '<head>',
        \ '<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">',
        \ '<title>Markdown Preview</title>',
        \ '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://yui.yahooapis.com/3.3.0/build/cssreset/reset-min.css">',
        \ '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://yui.yahooapis.com/3.3.0/build/cssbase/base-min.css">',
        \ '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://yui.yahooapis.com/3.3.0/build/cssfonts/fonts-min.css">',
        \ '<style>body{padding:20px;}div#container{background-color:#F2F2F2;padding:0 20px;margin:0px;border:solid #D0D0D0 1px;}</style>',
        \ '</head>', '<body>', '<div id="container">']
    call writefile(file_header, output_name)

    let md_command = '!' . MARKDOWN_COMMAND . ' "' . expand('%:p') . '" >> "' .
        \ output_name . '"'
    silent exec md_command

    if has('win32')
        let footer_name = tempname()
        call writefile(['</div></body></html>'], footer_name)
        silent exec '!type "' . footer_name . '" >> "' . output_name . '"'
        exec delete(footer_name)
    else
        silent exec '!echo "</div></body></html>" >> "' .
            \ output_name . '"'
    endif

    " If we changed the encoding, change it back.
    if original_encoding != 'utf-8' || original_bomb == 1
        if original_bomb == 1
            set bomb
        endif
        silent exec 'set fileencoding=' . original_encoding
        silent update
    endif

    silent exec '!' . BROWSER_COMMAND . ' "' . output_name . '"'

    exec input('Press ENTER to continue...')
    echo
    exec delete(output_name)
    redraw!

endfunction

" Map this feature to the key sequence '\a' (backslash lowercase-a)
map <Leader>a :call PreviewMarkdown()<CR>