Why would anyone on Linux want to use a Microsoft terminal editor, when especially on Linux we have a long history of very strong and good terminal editors? I mean really, why?
this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
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Because the same people who might be forced to use this tool on the job are the same who like linux.
They do the same with powershell en vscode and you can just remote terminal from linux into windows.
Its a small investment in making developers more comfortabel with their toold and thus increase chance they will use them.
I don't know? Don't hate the messenger. I also ask myself why.
No, but thanks.
I understand. I just wanted to share the news.
laughs in
- ed
- nano, pico
- emacs
- vi, vim, neovim, nvchad
- kate
- gedit
- mousepad
- vscode, oss
Helix? ๐ข
best editor
I'm not saying you should ms edit. I just wanted to let people about this weird news. ๐คฃ
Appreciated and we all had a great laugh :)
To add, I've been using micro lately.
I cant wait to never install this. Immediately forgetting it exists. A big linux selling point is moving away from the microsoft ecosystem
I think you are right.
Ok. Was this just a case of someone seeing if they can? Because my only thought here is โWhy?โ
It's really small, can easily replace nano
That it can fit on a 5 1/4" floppy with room to spare might have been important once, but I think we are long past that point. Micro takes 5 MB, Nano 3.
Looking into it further it looks a bit like NIH syndrome. Here's Microsoft's explanation: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/edit-is-now-open-source/
Why build another CLI editor?
What motivated us to build Edit was the need for a default CLI text editor in 64-bit versions of Windows. 32-bit versions of Windows ship with the MS-DOS editor, but 64-bit versions do not have a CLI editor installed inbox. From there, we narrowed down our optionsโฆ
Many of you are probably familiar with the โHow do I exit vim?โ meme. While it is relatively simple to learn the magic exit incantation, itโs certainly not a coincidence that this often turns up as a stumbling block for new and old programmers.
Because we wanted to avoid this for a built-in default editor, we decided that we wanted a modeless editor for Windows (versus a modal editor where new users would have to remember different modes of operation and how to switch between them). This unfortunately limited our choices to a list of editors that either had no first-party support for Windows or were too big to bundle them with every version of the OS. As a result, Edit was born.
TL;DR: We tried nothing and were all out of options.
I actually understand why Microsoft would create their own terminal editor again. It kinda make sense and they now have it fully in their own control.
Not only it the binary under the magic 200k file size limit. They can now also better integrate it with windows and their key bindings etc.
Why didn't they write this instead of the BS above?
They didn't ask me ๐ค
It's only a matter of time before MS figures out a copilot ncurses ui and Trojan horses the editor
Joking like this is how vi got vigor.
The proper answer is don't even touch that xit. It could be a front for automatic AI installs or something where you learn that you can opt out of it but 5 years after they stole the data.
Microsoft is a totally evil company and so is meta, yahoo and Google.
no, we have nano at home
MS should finally make teams available on linux. like it used to be.
but they know it would make switching to linux too easy for BYOD users. so they give us a terminal editor. and try to compete with vim and nano?
That logo looks cool af
It's a merger of the standard </> used to represent programming, and a pen. Pretty creative.
Maybe they ARE moving to Linux? I expect Power Shell next. /s
Powershell has been available on linux for years already.
I'm pretty sure I installed powershell on my Ubuntu box
Huh, no idea if that's already a thing.
From a quick search, looks like the first cross platform release was in 2016.