me like use nano. nano say how do thing. nano exit easy.
Fortunately, every computer comes equipped with an “exit editor” button. It’s on the back, attached to the power supply unit. You just flick the switch. Exits every editor known to humanity. /j
I used some distro with vim back in the day and I just kept using it. I lose my shit when I use something with just nano and my muscle memory tries to do a vim thing.
Same. Makes nano a fucking nightmare.
I love nano. I used to do tech support for a Linux-based content management system (before SAaS take took off)… The customer sysadmins were sometimes whichever engineer was volun-told to do it, so competency varied wildly.
I helped mostly with installs. This might be the poor newbie sysadmin’s first time on the command line. Nano was my go-to suggestion for editing config files–all the commands are right there! Much less intimidating than vi or emacs for a newbie.
I use micro. It’s 1000x better.
Pico…I’m going the wrong direction
Ugh. At least two decades I’ve used them and never made that connection. Thank you. And curse you. lol
Today I learned about the existence of “milli” and “kilo”, both of which are terminal-based text editors! Quite interesting. I wonder if there are any more SI unit prefix text editors…
I was coming here to say “what about micro?”
Some real talk.
Can we just include the 4 most popular text editors on basic systems??
Like i wanna scream when there isnt my text editor installed on a lightweight distro.
Vi Emacs Micro Nano
For context,
Debian ships with nano and vi Openwrt only ships with nano
Like cant we just include small editors. In a perfect world i would want neovim installed. But i understand its larger and has alot more dependency’s.
So having VI isnt as good but im willing to be reasonable.
JUST INCLUDE VI
the reason i learned vim is because VI is installed by default on almost every distro.
Im tempted to try emacs tho
It’s important to learn how to use package managers. :)
Emacs macros are sooo nice.
No love for vim?
Vim users: “I feel bad for you”
Nano users: “I don’t think about you at all”
Nano users :
Me no think
Nano users have more important things to think about, saying this as an nvim user
I think it’s more likely the opposite.
The image is misleading. The brain sizes represent the amount of grey matter it takes to operate the editor. The nano guy has plenty of brain power left over for things like hygiene, breathing and basic reasoning.
vim guy, emacs guy look big brain. me brain smol. me bathe yesterday, thank you.
nano is just a text editor, I use it as a text editor, it has keybindings on screen by default, no need to config or memorise, why bother? (for text editing, not whatever people use vim or emacs for)
Kind of, but not really? Nano by default displays US English(?) keyboard bindings which are different to the keyboard I have, so I still have to have a cheat sheet open when I’m on a system with nano-only editor.
There are exceptions to everything.
When I was first learning how to code I was working on some beginner project and couldn’t figure it out. I asked a friend who knew a few things what I was doing wrong and he hopped on my computer, fixed the code then opened it in vim and told me my project wasn’t working because of whatever text editor I was using (I think sublime). So for like a year I hardly learned how to code but I got pretty dang good with vim.
Gedit users be like
Ed users are vim lusers on steroids.
I do appreciate this in nano. It helps me complete the new container config occasionally required to install vim.
I’m team nano, I’m not smart enough to use the other two and for whenever I need to open a text file in terminal only environment once every year I can remember how to navigate nano. So I’ll keep using nano.
I use emacs but it’s only convenient to me with a lot of custom stuff on top. Vanilla emacs tho, hell no.
neovim user (inside zellij) and same. More of a full blown IDE than an editor.
Also for the keybind memory impaired like myself:
Yep, I’ve gradually gone from using vim motions in VSCode to using Neovim with basically all the functionality I need for backend (.NET and TypeScript) and infrastructure work.
There are still some things I have to rebuild some muscle memory for, but it’s been great. I haven’t made it to zellij yet but that’s the next step.
Yes. It’s newby-friendly, what is great for the time every 2 or 3 years that it opens in my face and there’s no alternative editor installed.
Copy and paste are there too, but there’s no reason to use them instead of the terminal buffer, so I can edit things in an editor I like. I just wish it made it easier to delete several lines at the same time.
CTRL-K,K,K…
That’s racist
Omega-level container brain
I use Helix btw
+1 for a Helix home.
Helix is my favorite, it does everything I want a text editor to do and it’s much more intuitive than vim/nvim. I was never a power user of either so I’m sure it’s missing plenty of functionality that nvim users are used to but it’s perfect for my use cases.
Ah, my kith and kin. Salutations, ye of excellent discerning taste.
nice! LMK if they ever get that frontend running
You can subscribe to the GitHub discussion, it looks like there are some prototypes but not a definitive GUI: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/discussions/11783
Never ceases to amaze me how people get so exercised over a text editor.
I remember the time when Linux jokes were about audio drivers and X11 config files, but audio has long been working out of the box, and X11 is already dead and cremated.
Even recompiling kernel now takes around five minutes instead of two hours, so that joke is irrelevant too.
So all we are left with is timeless discussion of which text editor is the best, and dumping on Windows.
This has been a lighthearted fake rivalry for as long as these text editors have existed.
That’s because we all know which is the obvious superior text editor.
Helix, the true choice among champions.
Windows 11 Notepad.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if the memes give outsiders the impression that there is a real text editor war.
So all we are left with is timeless discussion of which text editor is the best, and
dumping on Windows.why it is nanoFTFY. :P
So all we are left with is timeless discussion of which text editor is the best,
Gnome sucks!
Ducks and runs away
Bullshit, gedit is great
the ootb audio drivers on my thinkpad running fedora sound better than my work windows laptop
Most tradespeople will have favoured tools. It might be for woodworking, plumbing, electrics, plastering or writing code.
There’s little point in being tribal about it, but conversations will happen.
Real answer: those things matter to me because a quick frictionless experience very heavily dependant on muscle memory really helps with my ADHD. Laggy interfaces, having to hold left key for several seconds, and similar issues quickly pull my out of my train of thought.
It’s not about shaving 2 minutes off my day, it’s about not interrupting the flow.
when nerds fight, it’s the text editors that suffer
Because there is only one objectively right answer. Anyone who use anything else is no true unix user.
You mean a Rubik’s cube.
micro enters the chat.
Static, portable binary with no dependencies.
Out of the box:
- Syntax highlighting
- Multi-line cursors like Sublime Text
- Mouse support (works incredibly well)
- Splits and tabs for working on multiple files
- Diff gutter
- Copy and paste with system clipboard
- Cross-platform (runs basically on anything that Go does)
- Sane key binds (ctrl-s, ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-z, ctrl-x, etc)
- Terminal emulator
- Plugin system to extend it
- And much much more
I have nothing to do with the project but this binary is the absolute best. curl or wget to any host and away you go with effectively a Sublime Text / VSCode like in the terminal. It’s as simple as nano and as functional as a well configured and extended vim.
It’s baffling it’s not more well known and not installed by default on major distros.
That’s not a text editor, that’s an IDE.
IMO it needs better LSP support and things like refactoring, smart auto completion, and go to definition for a range of languages to be considered an ide.
And emacs is an operating system 😂
And vim is a way of life
I’m glad we all agree that nano is the one true text editor.
/s
I use nano because I can’t be assed to memorize key bindings, but I’ll give this a go
If only I could get copy paste working when using micro over ssh. inside a document it works fine but I can’t get it to put stuff on my system clipboard
to use the system clipboard I select with the mouse while holding shift, then do ctrl-shift-c iirc. That’ll use the terminal emulator highlight and the system clipboard. At least on my machine, using kitty. Idk all the pieces that need to be in place for this to work.
How many Linux distros include micro in their minimal image? Vim, emacs, and nano are good because I can connect to just about any container or Linux VM and expect to have all of them available.
Let’s say I have a test that always passes on my machine but fails in CI. If I can get a terminal on the test runner, I can open up my test code in vim, add extra logging and error handling, and rerun the test to check my fix.
I am not going to install additional editors in a VM that will be recreated next time I push a code change. If I am setting up a development environment for long term use, I will install my favorite IDE and configuring all the bells and whistles.
the same old argument that anal sex is good because it works on more people
you might appreciate it, but being preinstalled is not the selling point you think it is. I spend hundreds of times longer in the editor than installing it. I want something good while I’m using it. I don’t care if it takes me 30 seconds to install, and maybe no one should.
Most include micro iirc
