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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[–] psud@aussie.zone 2 points 11 hours ago

Emacs has a menu, it's not exactly hard. F10 to open the menu in text mode

[–] MehBlah@lemmy.world 179 points 5 days 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.

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 32 points 5 days ago

vim guy, emacs guy look big brain. me brain smol. me bathe yesterday, thank you.

[–] MoffKalast@lemmy.world 153 points 5 days ago (4 children)

Vim users: "I feel bad for you"

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

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 63 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] quips@slrpnk.net 38 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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

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[–] rosco385@lemmy.wtf 43 points 5 days ago (2 children)
[–] Bluewing@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

I can use Vim, it was the choice for years. But I actually like using nano because it's what I need and all I need.

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[–] AlbatrossFanboy@programming.dev 13 points 4 days ago

I don't get why there's so much prejudice towards nano users in the Linux community, people act like nano is useless but it performs its job well, and it does it without being large or overly complicated.

[–] Francislewwis@lemmy.world 18 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Honestly nano is perfect for quick edits. Vim and Emacs are powerful, but sometimes you just want to open a config file, change one line, and exit without fighting the editor. 😄

[–] creation7758@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 days ago (2 children)

This is what i use vim for. Vim doesn't necessarily have to be a full blown ide with 30 plugins

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[–] ruuster13@lemmy.zip 62 points 5 days ago (6 children)

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

[–] faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 38 points 5 days ago (4 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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[–] Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 31 points 5 days ago (2 children)

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

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[–] smh@slrpnk.net 34 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

Nano you can pick up in ten minutes and master in an afternoon. By that time you’re still reading the intro to vim or eMacs.

[–] hedders@fedia.io 46 points 5 days ago (6 children)

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

[–] pelya@lemmy.world 40 points 5 days ago (9 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 26 points 5 days ago (9 children)

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

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[–] jeffep@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)
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[–] cepelinas@sopuli.xyz 33 points 5 days ago (2 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)

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[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 29 points 5 days ago (8 children)

I use micro. It's 1000x better.

[–] kalpol@lemmy.ca 12 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Pico...I'm going the wrong direction

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[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

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...

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[–] fartsparkles@lemmy.world 37 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (16 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.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 8 hours ago

And in Emacs ctrl+k means kill the line or selection (adds it to the kill ring) and ctrl+y yanks a value from the kill ring. Meta+y cycles to the next item in the ring. Meta is usually escape, unless you're using the computer of someone with a key called meta

This comes from being earlier than MS-DOS, so it couldn't copy someone else's work (why did it take so long for DOS and windows to come up with the innovation of a copy history. It came after the windows key

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[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 9 points 4 days ago (3 children)

nano is usually built in. Adding another one is just redundant if all you're using it for is editing an occasional config file.

Honestly never understood the hate for it. Who cares? Petty, stupid, nerd-wars over little crap like a text editor is the reason average people don't even consider linux.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 8 hours ago

Nano is fine for editing, fine for working with configuration files. It only fails when you try to use it as a development editor

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[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 17 points 5 days ago (3 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.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 8 hours ago

I try to ctrl+x ctrl+c in things that aren't Emacs. Whichever you choose you eventually learn it well and it seems so easy that it's hard to see what the advantage of an alternative might be good for

No one can argue against you as you know how to use the tool. Vi and Emacs are both perfectly capable editors, both have been used to make huge amounts of code. Both are great for updating configuration files, both beat the simple editors when it comes to syntex highlighting and encouraging correct updates

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[–] bilb@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 days ago

Linux text editor discourse has been baffling to me for decades now. I don't care which you use, and I care even less about why.

[–] Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works 15 points 5 days ago (6 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

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[–] callyral@pawb.social 18 points 5 days ago (5 children)
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[–] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Micro for the win

[–] flango@lemmy.eco.br 6 points 4 days ago
Emacs evil mode enters the chat
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