Nano has already supplanted the great EMacs and Vim as the most popular text editor of all linux distros, for though it has many omissions in functionality it scores over the older, more complete programs in two important respects. First, it is slightly simpler; and secondly it has the text “^ Exit” inscribed in highlighted text on its footer
EDIT : This sees to be going over some people’s heads. It’s a hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy reference.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions . . . it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
That’s because Ubuntu, honestly.
I’ve used Vim, NeoVim, Micro,
mg(1), JOE, and even MS Edit (both the original DOS version and the recent Rust clone). No matter how complex and tailored I wrote my config, though, the features I actually used were included in GNU nano and/or my command shell without any of the bugs, bloat, learning curve, or slop.Using it as my default just makes sense.
Nano is great for editing files. It is absolutely terrible for any amount of text processing or anything other than raw code copied from a tutorial
oh no, not again.
Best local simple terminal text editor is micro.
It is insane how far using the same shortcuts literally everything else can get you in the world of terminal text editors and yet here we are
I use helix for all my developer work and nano for “I need to edit this config file buried somewhere in /usr/…”. I never remember to do Sudo -E
Sometimes I catch myself opening nano inside emacs’ term. I literally forget I’m using emacs and just do it on instinct. I once also opened emacs inside emacs’ term and I just stared at the screen in disbelief.
Emacs: “Sure, fuck it, why not.”
It’s there and it’s easy. Most people don’t use terminal text editors unless they are SSHing in a server, and they would only do that sporadically, so it makes no sense to become proficient in a complex text editor like vim or Emacs for that little use case.
Sidenote: personally, I learned vim once, and used it extensively every day for two years. I stopped using it for one year and was back to square one. Now I use vscode for everything… Even when I’m using SSH, because vscode supports SSH
I always forget that vscode can do that
Every editor “supports” SSH, you can mount files on a remote SSH server via SSHFS.
And instead vscode supports SSH (without quotes), you can connect to an SSH host, and it will open files and folders on the host like it does locally. And if you open the integrated terminal it will run on the remote host. And it will forward the git login agent so you can commit or push with the credentials of your local machine. And it can forward ports from the remote.
It’s kind of sad that many people don’t use the shell / terminal anymore, especially as part of their regular development flow. There’s so much scripting and so many shell commands you can use that will do things you just can’t do in vscode. And having an editor like vi immediately available is part of that flow.
For me, vim and the shell are my primary IDE. I rarely fire up vscode. But I guess I’m getting old. Still faster than the younger devs who mainly use vscode and then struggle when they are forced to use the command line due to whatever circumstance where vscode is not available or appropriate. Kind of makes me sad. Feels like a valuable skill is being lost.
Oh, I use the terminal a lot, it doesn’t throw me off. When I can’t have vscode (e.g. small openwrt devices) I can use vim. It’s just plain easier to use vscode for editing files when I can
People don’t have to look up “how to exit nano”
I like Nano; it lets me do what I need to do quickly, simply and efficiently.
That’s why nano gets used more than vi/vim. In the past, the majority of people using terminal text editors were geeks and developers. Now the majority of people using the terminal text editors are more often casual users who have no use for putting the time and effort to learn vi/vim, especially because they have no need for the extended functionality
I don’t get you people. Proper copy/paste support is “extended functionality”? I beg to differ. This is basic functionality.
And no, single line copy/paste as offered by nano, or copy and paste through the terminal is not proper copy/paste.
Nano has proper copy/pate, it works identical to any text editor. Mark -> copy/cut -> paste
Sit down by the campfire my dear youngin’ and I’ll talk you tales of a terror myth called ASSEMBLY
OOOOOooOOOOOooOOO!
Machine language! Director memory addressing! AAAAAaaaaa!
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Computers existed before the year 2000, you silly children…
Doesn’t matter if it’s not “proper” if it works.
Blasphemy! Ctrl+k is multi line!
I’m in the “been working with Linux since the 90s” gang so I call vim vi and nano pico and when I started there was a coolness factor to be considered. I was incredibly uncool so I used whatever I wanted, including pico - I mean you used pine for email back in the day and the interface was nearly identical, so whatever.
But I did want to be at least a tiny bit cooler, so I learned vi in a fairly rudimentary fashion. I can edit, jump, delete, search, replace, copy and paste - oh, and I can exit. I’ve spent so much time using vi, that my brain doesn’t even have to think about exiting, not even whether I want to write or not. It just happens like second nature. It’s actually gotten to where nano seems unduly burdensome to me.
But really, I prefer an IDE for programming. CLI editors will always be for configuration files and shell scripts to me.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in making text editors in the first place. And some said that even making operating systems had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have built computers at all.
In the beginning, boolean algebra was invented.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
I still think smart watches are a pretty neat idea.
Same here, computers have gone the wrong way; from utility to project to pet.
It is preinstalled and does what it needs to do. What else can I ask for?
Same reason people use notepad on windows. It’s already installed on almost every distro
I see Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy parody, I updoot
If ind it quite funny that the majority of the posts are about the text editor and not about the blatant hitchhiker’s guide reference to the point where I had to specify it in the OP and then the thread exploded after that point.
I’m part of the “learned Linux when I got my first raspberry pi” gang, and all Ras pi tutorials tell you to use nano. So yes.
