Changing from a distro that defaults to nano to another that defaults to vim… What to do other than installing nano and changing visudo?
Used to be vim back in the day, neovim with a few lsp plugins — hated the convoluted collection of config scripts — then into vis (modernized vim/sam hybrid) but now settled on helix. After a small adjust for some finger memory, I wouldn’t go back. A lot of quality of life features out of the box.
I just a modal editor that just works with some quality of life features as codebases I worked on grew in complexity.
Nano, because it’s the only one I can remember how to quit from without power cycling the computer.
Top Tip: open another terminal and kill the task from there
( /s )
I typically use nano for the quicker edits but enjoy using vim otherwise.
Vim, but I also find this battle completely stupid.
No only OP provided almost no discussion value in the post body, but also this topic has been discussed one million times and nothing more can be talked about.
I use emacs
One of us!
I use nano because I haven’t learned how to use anything else yet.
I use nano because it’s always there.
Emacs.
With all the vimmery going around nowadays though, I feel like I’m on the losing team. ;_;
Join us! Use Evil mode!
Still team Emacs. We’re a team because we use elisp, not because of something trivial like how our text editors work.
At the risk of restarting the Editor wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war) from days of yore, I find it interesting that emacs wasn’t even in your list of contenders. I hear it mentioned less frequently these days, so perhaps it’s going by the wayside?
For the record, I’m a vi/vim user! I had the privilege of being taught to use it by an RFC-writing greybeard decades ago, and have used it without thinking ever since.
For those who find themselves on a machine with only vi/vim, or want to learn, here’s a quick primer when editing a file (usually done by typing “vi foo.txt” in a shell) –
:q! …Force quit vi (:q also works – gentler!)
:wq! …Save file and quit vi
i (then type characters) …insert text at current position
A (then type characters) …Insert at end of current line
G …go to first character of last line in the file
/foo …search for first occurrence of “foo” in the file (hit / again to find additional instances)
x …Delete character under cursor
:56 …Go to line 56
yy …Copy the line the cursor is currently on into the buffer
p … Paste the buffer
r (then type character) …Replace character under cursor
u …undo (hit multiple times to undo prior actions)
When done with a command like this, hit Esc to go back into normal mode.
Second nature after a bit of practice! I used to work with a guy who insisted on using ed. That was… odd.
Yeah but op was comparing editors, not OS’s. https://emacsos.dev/
well it is an editor, it was intended to be an editor, you just have the options to watch videos within it 😂
:h?
:q
Not in my case but part of Emacs’ downward-trending mindshare could be due to RMS himself.
Is RMS still actively involved in Emacs?
“Why are we running from the police, Dad?”
“Because they use vim, son. We use Emacs”.
Helix
I’ve never heard of helix before, is it any good?
Which, for those not already knowing, is basically a reboot of VIM.
Team Vim. Because I learned the vim basics once 20 years ago and never bothered to learn after that. :D
Vim sorely underrated. Great tools/hotkeys. Felt like a master pianist clacking away while the terminal went berserk until suddenly the 2 hour job was done in 20 minutes.
I see you and raise straight vi.
That’s what I was taught at my first tech internship. It’s all they had on the UNIX system running the webserver in 1998.
I did write some web pages the pulled live data from the backend. I had the pleasure of writing them in C. I got the data binding to some kind of CORBA system using extern variables that were bound at compile time. All of the html (no js or css yet) was hand built and generated from the C code.
vi was the only editor on the system and there was no way to use arrow keys (the UNIX system didn’t have them on the keyboard at all).
I also had the displeasure of building a backup system on a floppy where I had to write a bat script that could manually load a token ring driver, bind a SMB share, load Ghost backup software and backup the local hard drive at under 2mb (yay coax thicknet). The tool used to query and write through the hostname for the backup? Copycon. Fucking copycon in DOS. That showed me how a terrible (but working) tool could be to work with.
Unless an editor can do reasonable vim emulation, I can’t take it seriously. You’re welcome to use it, but I won’t be able to get anything done in it quickly. The vi keys are too ground into my reflexes.
I’m an
emacs -nwkind of guy.But if I have to pick one of your options,
nano…but only to mod the repo config to install emacs-nox. After that having seen the resource usage is the same as vi just use what’s most versatile.
Just
echotext to create a new file or usesedandawkto edit an existing file.In reality, I use
nanofor edits andvimdifffor comparing files (usually a.pacnewafter an update on a headless device)Atleast be a neckbeard and use
catthe way neckbeard Gods intended \s
sed forever
