this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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me like use nano. nano say how do thing. nano exit easy.

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[–] Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 hour ago

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

[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 hours ago

Same. Makes nano a fucking nightmare.

[–] smh@slrpnk.net 13 points 6 hours ago

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.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 17 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

I use micro. It's 1000x better.

[–] kalpol@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Pico...I'm going the wrong direction

[–] daychilde@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

Ugh. At least two decades I've used them and never made that connection. Thank you. And curse you. lol

[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

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...

[–] moendopi@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

I was coming here to say "what about micro?"

[–] Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

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

[–] daychilde@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

It's important to learn how to use package managers. :)

[–] eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 hours ago

Emacs macros are sooo nice.

[–] stoly@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

No love for vim?

[–] neomachino@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 hours ago

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.

[–] MoffKalast@lemmy.world 87 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Vim users: "I feel bad for you"

Nano users: "I don't think about you at all"

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 38 points 10 hours ago (1 children)
[–] quips@slrpnk.net 20 points 10 hours ago

Nano users have more important things to think about, saying this as an nvim user

[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 hours ago

I think it's more likely the opposite.

[–] vaderaj@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago

Gedit users be like

[–] MehBlah@lemmy.world 92 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] cepelinas@sopuli.xyz 22 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

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)

[–] AbsolutelyClawless@piefed.social 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] cepelinas@sopuli.xyz 1 points 38 minutes ago

There are exceptions to everything.

[–] RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)
[–] sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 hours ago

I've been in camp Vim for decades, but I almost always suggest micro to people dipping their toe into Linux. I can't imagine thinking nano, or whatever, would be more comfortable unless the person has never used a computer before.

[–] phpinjected@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 6 hours ago

Ed users are vim lusers on steroids.

[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago

That has to come from someone who doesn't know the bliss of micro

[–] callyral@pawb.social 13 points 10 hours ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] ruuster13@lemmy.zip 49 points 13 hours ago (5 children)

I do appreciate this in nano. It helps me complete the new container config occasionally required to install vim.

[–] faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 29 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] hedders@fedia.io 39 points 12 hours ago (6 children)

Never ceases to amaze me how people get so exercised over a text editor.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 3 points 6 hours ago

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.

[–] pelya@lemmy.world 32 points 12 hours ago (5 children)

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.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 22 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

This has been a lighthearted fake rivalry for as long as these text editors have existed.

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[–] fartsparkles@lemmy.world 24 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (11 children)

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.

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