Like it cannot print invisible characters. Had a script create some broken folders with a BOM character at the beginning. I couldn't access the files in any way except that they appeared in dolphin and ls. Had to delete them via the fucking inode.
I was forced to use VSCode (an open source fork at least) to find out what the fuck was wrong with the input file the script used to generate the folder name.
You might like micro :) its like nano but with more user friendly features like Ctrl+s for save, and clicking places to change cursor location. I think you have to enable the "cheat sheet" of keyboard commands being visible all the time if you want it to always be showing like I do
It also supports extensions but I don't really care about that lol. I just want something simple with nice ux :)
p sure latest nano can do all that, you can atleast change the default save bindings to ctrl s in the .nanorc file and im p sure most distros include a build of nano that has mouse support. If its supported by the build, its just a settings toggle in the rc file likr the bindings :)
I was too untilI switched to opensuse aeon and default is vim instead of nano. I just switched. I don't care. Both are not perfect - i won' create yet another fork just because i want to do it differently. I don't get why vim has so few shortcuts.
I was playing around with Free BSD I think and the default was Vi. I was just like "yeah, no" and gave up. I didn't have wi-fi working so I couldn't install anything else.
It's worse than the picture depicts. It's not just the lovers, the elitists and the evangelists, it's the sheer range of choice too, beyond the loudest.
Vim is the one true editor, and the heretics who claim otherwise shall be driven forth and sent to re-education linux boot camps to learn the true ways.
This command will literally overwrite the file that you do whenever you try to edit it. You need two >> to append at the end of a file, but it's super-duper hard to put text in the middle of a file from the terminal. That is why people use editors, for sure. Now that I think about it, there probably is some psychopath who uses the actual command line as an editor. They're probably more elitist than Vim users lol.
Second choice: Nano. It's simple and comprehensible, and a best CLI choice for newbies. You can then turn to vim, emacs, or whatever, but don't make your life harder from the get-go
People suggesting to start with Vim are probably the same ones pushing for Arch as a first distro. C'mon.
That’s how you breed scrubs who can’t M-x-butterfly. I say give them a distro that boots into vi and starts a background process that block internet access around them. If they manage to quit vi and kill the daemon, they’re ready for Linux.
Libre office isn't a text editor it's a document processor; more like a gui for something like TeX, or realisticially html, than a program for reading/editing plain text.
Kate is a basic GUI text editor that can highlight syntax, suggest options and do other things useful for code and configs. Comes with KDE (which is a common newbie recommendation) and is available as Flatpak everywhere else.
But sure, there are instances where you should use CLI text editors. If you need to edit text files as root, this is generally the best option. Also, it's the only option for headless setups and SSH. For that, nano will do.
I use Micro in the terminal - it offers good desktop integration with keys similar to DEs like ctrl+v and ctrl+c, rather than being terminal centred (e.g. Ctrl+C is usually the standard interrupt/abort key in the terminal). So it's nice if you're mainly in a desktop but pop in to a terminal occasionally and have the DE muscle memory.
I use Kate outside the terminal.
But honestly, which text editor you use depends on what you use it for and how often. Vim is very powerful and allows very fast use & productivity if you learn it properly and probably very useful if you spend a lot of time in the terminal or TTY, but Nano is more straight forward and easy for a lot of basic terminal based work.
I've been using micro as well recently. But other than that if I'm on a remote server I'll use whatever it has available, starting with nano then vi/vim.
The so-called desktop integration is what I disable in vim. I want to have the terminal in control and use select text to copy instead of entering visual mode. When I want visual mode, I use my keyboard. (:
Idk it took me 3 attempts to learn (neo)vim, but now every Linux system I SSH in I just go straight for vi(m), because moving around and editing in Nano is just so slow when you're used to vim keys.
I swear I'm not trying to proselytize. People should use whatever they want, and these discussions are pointless. It's all just tradeoffs and getting used to things.
Not our fault everyone blows past the kind offer of : vimtutor on startup! (I kid. The default editor shouldn't require a class.)
You're 100% correct. Nano is a perfectly reasonable default.
That said, it is 2026. It also wouldn't kill us to default to an interactive one-time prompt that defaults to nano, but offers one or two others, and removes itself after setting the user's choice.
Nothing wrong with Kate. I know how to use Nano because it's an essential skill for when your machine boots into emergency mode, but aside from that editing text from the terminal is lunacy.
I don't understand the issue. I've been using Linux less than a year but I started with a KDE desktop so it came with Kate, Kwrite, and Nano. I've literally never needed anything else.
I've tried out a couple IDEs like Codium and Geany, but I don't see what they offer that Kate doesn't.
I've also at least opened Emacs but I didn't get much further than that.
I use Nano in the terminal when I'm editing config files because I read somewhere that it's safer.
I installed Neovim and Micro but I haven't explored those at all yet. I don't have any problems with Nano.
I tried Pluma but I really only use it for dumping lists.
For the most part I use Kate, but for simpler notes I use Kwrite just to keep them in separate spots on my launcher.
You usually don't take the time to learn vim or Emacs just to write some notes. The real value of such powerful and highly customisable text editors only shows itself when you are editing lots and lots of text on a regular basis (e.g. codimg, writing blogs or any other form of writing)
The advantage vim and emacs have is, that they have keybindings for about everything you could ever want. This has the advantage, that once you know how to use them, your working speed massively increases, but it takes quite some time to learn the keybindings. Another advantage and disadvantage of (neo) vim and emacs is, that both are being modified by config files. This comes at the advantage of being able to modify about everything about your editor, but means that sometimes it can be quite hard to implement a specific behaviour. The next advantage is, that your configuration becomes easily portable and extensible. Implementing a specific behaviour often only requires copy pasting a 15 year old stackoverflow post and if you want to move to a new device, you just have to grab your config files and are good to go.
Emacs also has orgmode directly integrated into it, which can be used to write text and format it (similar to Markdown, but much more powerful) and even export it to other formats like HTML or LaTeX. As you might expect, orgmode also has its own keybindings. This means, that you can write your documents inside emacs [orgmode], use all the powerful text formatting tools and keybindings and then share your work in a nicely formatted and portable way.
I'm sorry I don't see how that's relevant to my point.
I'm saying that of all the text editors, nano is the one that usually takes the least amount of effort to learn and set up. Both of those options require either learning or set up, so why would I choose them if convinience is what I'm after?
That's not the issue so much as it leads to the collapse of serious development. Better put, if these plugins are so important, why not add them to the editor? Instead we get turing complete configuration and all the performance degradation downstream of it.
I use Vim, which has some really handy tricks that I use somewhat often (eg, type :r! followed by a terminal command and it will add the standard output of said command to the bottom of your file).
That being said, there's nothing wrong with Nano. Most distros come with it out of the box nowadays, and its learning curve is practically nonexistent compared to the alternatives.
No doubt about it. Most editors have the same capabilities or better. It’s just when you use something for 40+ hours a week you know it inside and out.
I've recently switched to writing my notes in markdown in a code editor, since I already have one open most of the time. vsCode for work (I do a lot of PowerShell), vsCodium at home, although I'm sure there's better options.
My one gripe with Notepad++ is that I haven't found any easy way to do dark mode with it. You can make the window "chrome" dark mode, and you can make general text background black and text white, but then that screws up the language specific and file diff themes/coloring.
There's probably a collection of importable settings for that somewhere online though.
Nano/micro are great for people who need a terminal text editor but don't want to learn anything to use it.
If you do want to put some time into learning, it really doesn't take long to get to a point of base competency in emacs or vim -- less than an hour for sure to just be able to move around in the document and have a basic understanding of the editing controls.
Both are hugely deep systems that you can keep learning for years, but only at the pace that you need; most tasks can be accomplished pretty easily with a bunch of inputs, but there's usually a much faster way if you know the shortcuts.
As for the difference, vim is more modal -- you switch to editing mode, do some editing, then switch to typing mode and type. Most commands are one to three sequential button presses. For some more exotic functionality you use the command line to type a command, which has auto-complete.
On the other hand emacs is chorded, meaning you use multiple simultaneous keys to do functions, usually a modifier key like ctrl + something else. This gives you more direct power while actually typing, but IMO has a bit steeper of a learning curve, and I just personally don't love the chorded inputs, I think they're more work to input than the sequences in vim. But either editor will give you unprecedented power over text with minimal fuss.
I personally use Helix, which is basically just a slightly different take on Vim, as well as taking inspiration from Kakoune which is another competitor. It's got really nice modern defaults and I like the way that Kakoune treats selections in contrast to Vim.
This is kinda irrelevant for a new user, but vi/vim is available literally everywhere. If you need to shh onto another machine and edit some files, it's the only editor you can reliably expect to exist.
The reasons us elders use VI is because on a new installation, it was the only thing available until:
You are lucky enough to find a compiled version of PINE/PICO, or
You have the compiler installed, and can get the source code and build it yourself.
For some reason, some elitists decided that if you don't know that, then you are a failure. But honestly, when modern distros started coming out with WYSIWYG-type editors, it was a relief, even though I reverted to VI/VIM because of muscle-memory, I do not push it on new users. It's the same argument people make for driving manual vs automatic, sure it's useful, but when was the last time you even saw a manual car? (At least in North America).
You want to live dangerously, go ahead and put NetBSD with just the basics and leave the rest of us who want to do something useful alone.
I learned vim (technically vi) because it was the only editor available on these tiny liveusbs I would use for work. It was literally my only option. Once I got used to the motions, using any text editor without vim motions felt unusable to me.
Once I got used to the motions, using any text editor without vim motions felt unusable to me.
Same for emacs. At this point my emacs keybindings feel more intuitive to me than the standard keybinds like Ctrl+C/-V to copy and paste (in emacs its Meta + W to copy and CTRL + Y to paste (Yank))
nano lovers? Is there such thing? Nano was the one I used until I learned how to do basics on vim, nano is just the more intuitive/easiest way to just edit a file and it's enough most of the time
Man, I have wanted to learn Emacs for a while, but those shortcut keys kill my hands and soul in general. I know about Evil mode, but for whatever reason I just gotta use default controls when I play a new game. The graphics are terrible, but they say that the gameplay for emacs is pretty great. I guess you could say that Emacs is the Dark Souls of text editors.
What really helps for me is pressing control with the inside of my pinky knuckle, and alt with your thumb. That way your fingers can stay on the home row. If you have a very low profile keyboard or are on a laptop, best you can do is probably remap capslock to be control.
Honestly, since I switched to vim and got through the first month of "why the fuck am I doing this to myself", I just can't go back. Especially once you get to customizing it, installing plugins, themes etc ... it's better than any IDE out there.
I miss atom, when it was discontinued I tried vscodium and immediately hated it, then used kate for a while, and now use neovim. neovim is nice but atom was just so good
Did it solve the resource-guzzling issues that Atom and VS Code, like most Electron applications, suffer from? Because TBH I did enjoy using Atom and Code, but the RAM use was insane and IIRC copying your config to a new machine was kind of annoying. Though Kate also has its issues (the configuration is also annoying to copy to a new machine, it changes the way its colorschemes are defined every couple of years (forcing you do redo your colorscheme customizations), and the newer versions started struggling with my 10 000+ lines note/calender files).
I'm using Emacs, but after getting a bit used to the vanilla keybindings for the past couple of weeks i still feel like vim-like motions are better, so now i'm playing around with a helix-mode package to emulate helix keybindings (i was using helix before switching to emacs). One change i did make though is bind end-of-line and beginning-of-line to $ and 0 like in proper vim. Helix uses END ans HOME keys for this and i hate it lol, no idea why they thought it was a good idea to move that far away from the home row for that.
Also the naming of these apps are incredible confusing. Im using linux full time for over a year now (Mint, Bazzite) and still cant remember the names of half the damn utility apps.
Its a good thing most distros show you the most likely thing if you start typing in some slightly relevant text to the search.
My idiot brain hardwired by years of windows use:
-I need to download an app... Something, something app store
Linux:
-You mean Bazaar?
-Aw yisss, but also want to make a screenshot, something to do with snipping tool?
Long time Linux user but full time at home about a year. I had to rename Spectacle to snip because I can not remember to type s-p-e-c instead of snip. It wasn’t worth fighting anymore so I just renamed the shortcut.
Also struggle with LibreCalc opening when I search for calculator. I just can’t remember kcalc either. But I won’t rename it, trying to struggle through. Just have two decades of muscle memory to overcome.
Gedit for docs (plain and simple + have basic spelling/code highlighting), kate for weird things like JSON (have actual tools to fix spacing/tabulation)
Well alright! it's pretty silly, but I've never bothered to learn nano, despite the key commands being listed right there in the program. BUT I did spend a mario-teaches-typing amount of time learning vim years ago because... masochist, I guess? haha
Glad you like nano, and I'm really not a purist about editors or anything. Actually, a co-worker of mine uses emacs and our company uses slack. If you type the shortcode :vim:, the emacs logo appears, and :emacs: makes the vim logo, because it makes us both laugh, and what editor you use doesn't matter
Vim or neovim. At first just because I wanted to learn it for fun. But now because it after I memorized a few core commands, it really did just feel great to use. Quick and surprisingly easy.
Why is this post not mentioning the most important editor of all time? Why is this post deliberately missing out the standard text editor ed, that wastes no system resource on unnecessary output like help messages or a text buffer. If you are coming to Linux you should really start looking into learning ed, since, well it is the standard Texteditor overall.
The “editor wars” are predominantly fought by people who work in IT (system admins, developers, etc.), which requires using the terminal frequently or is often the only tool at their disposal.
Some folks also use specific editors because of their text editing capabilities. Vim’s modal editing is very intuitive and fast, while Emacs’ Org Mode feature set can be a sole reason to put up with Emacs.
::: spoiler Tangential
A case can be made that modern programming does not really require a terminal since IDEs meet its needs. But the debate becomes more subjective and less objective.
I work in IT, use emacs configured with vim’s modal editing, even though my employer provides expensive IDE licenses for me to use.
I shifted IDEs to Vim because the former were too slow to open some of the code. Later I shifted to Emacs, trading some of that speed for Org mode.
Now, I treat Emacs as the sole software to interact with the computer, as much as I can.
:::
Vim + snippets made writing math with LaTeX a legitimately enjoyable experience during my masters degree. LaTeX commands are a pain to type out without snippets. Does any other editor have this?
Also not sure if other editors let you save your session, tabs/splits/windows, and easily switch your view. That and registers, marks, macros, and the ability to search and rerun commands are too convenient. Vim for both large and small coding projects for me.
Linux has made great strides to being approachable for new users. The agony of choice for so many things (distro, editor, nearly any tool family with more than one option) and the factionalism around the options is probably one of the few big obstacles left.
I don't have a solution for the factionalism. I'd put forth a suggestion for a simple "standard" choice (Kate/gedit for GUI and nano for CLI; I personally use vim, but I think nano is more approachable) but I'm sure someone will disagree and we're back to square one.
Every single commit has become co-authored by claude. It's not like even just allowing LLM contributions or something, the main devs are full on vibe coding.
I liked Sublime enough to pay for it. It has become my primary text editor at home.
I also like Atom/Pulsar, but it takes a but too long to open for my use case.
Obsidian isn't exactly a text editor, but it fits many of the use cases. It may be closed source, but all the files are accessible and usable if the app ever disappears.
I want to use vim more, but I'm lazy, and the learning curve keeps putting me off. I might get there eventually.
Nano is ol' reliable. When everything else failed, Nano was still there for me and worked perfectly.
Since I learned how to exit vim, without murdering it, I use vim.
Vim is mostly my choice becasue deleting and moving lines is incedibly fast and it has the very best code highlighting.
Commandline? Nano (or Pico or whatever) if it exists. Else vim/vi. I originally used emacs back in the day. However, for anything else, I'm using the closest thing to notepad++ I can find at the time.
mutt wasn't a thing on the system where I learned pine. The first version existed out in the world, but the sysadmin probably thought it too new to install if they'd heard of it at all. We had three choices: mailx, elm and pine. pine granted access to newsgroups - the system had an NNTP server - as well as e-mail so it was a no-brainer for most of us.
I use an IDE when I want to code, and Kwrite for when I just need a simple-ass .txt file
I was a big fan of Atom before it died, and I recently found out that it now has a spiritual successor, https://pulsar-edit.dev/ which I've been using for when I do coding projects
I use Vim. I am not a power user by any stretch but it's what I use. I know like three shortcuts, which is enough to make me marginally faster in vim than nano. I don't really feel much desire to learn a terminal editor and be super good with it. There are other things I'm more interested in spending my time on if I feel motivated to learn.
You may as well start there. You'll be using it eventually once you inevitably develop the same passionate idolization of Unix that I, the righteous self appointed evangelist of all things good && just && Unix possess.
When I uninstalled Windows and switched to Linux (CachyOS (which is Arch BTW)) I also took the time to free myself from VScode to completely escape Microsoft's fuckery.
I learned how to use Neovim. I've got a configuration that I really like and I took care to make it portable enough that I can just copy over the init.lua file to set everything up on a different computer.
However this is only earned through weeks of Lua hell. You are effectively building your own editor from almost the ground up. I only recommend Neovim if you want the first medium scale project you work on to be Neovim itself.
I use nvim/ vim just because i was new and didn't know anything I could edit on an ssh connection with beside vim. And it isn't that hard, using lazyvim atm (still new and dont have time to configure myself) and if I can just use the mouse if I am too stupid, not that hard. But it get more and more convenient as time goes on. You encounter enough times and just think to yourself "is there a better way?" and most of the time there is!
Just start with "i", "" and ":wq".
Use whatever you want. I use nano, why? Because all I need it for is to do some simple config edits in the terminal emulator and it does all I need while keeping it simple.
Use whatever you want. I use nano, why? Because all I need it for is to do some simple config edits in the terminal emulator and it does all I need while keeping it simple.
It does look promising, I'll have to try it the next time I have to remove the dust from the terminal just to edit a config file one time for the next several months.
I hate modal keybindings (Vim, Nano and Emacs, all alike; though the Object-Verb paradigm looks promising for me, but until now, nothing's better than quasimodal CUA/spring-loaded CUA).
The reason why I'm on team Vim is because it's standard. A copy of it is installed on pretty much every Unix-like system out there. Vi is built into Busybox.
I will sometimes play with the weirdest little electronics, like a smart outlet or something, and the damn thing will have a little Linux distro running out of Flash and there's no room to install anything but it's got Vi on it, often as part of Busybox or Toybox. Nano might not be installed, emacs almost certainly isn't, Vi or Vim almost certainly WILL be in there. For if you ever need to edit wpa_supplicant.conf on your coffee maker. Because we live in a world that contains that hell sentence.
285 Comments
SigHunter@discuss.tchncs.de · 108 pts · 19d
Kate
cRazi_man@europe.pub · 33 pts · 19d
Kwrite
calango@programming.dev · 13 pts · 19d
when I use kde I prefer to use this edit too
TabbsTheBat@pawb.social · 18 pts · 19d
Came here to say kate! I tried a bunch of them before but kate is nice :3. And then I have nano for the terminal
uniquethrowagay@feddit.org · 9 pts · 19d
Kate is by far the best GUI text editor I ever used. And unless it's a short config file and I use nano, I want GUI. It's not the 80s anymore!
asdf@feddit.org · 5 pts · 18d
It's not the 80s anymore, thus I want a good TUI over GUI any day
Reznik@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 19d
The only sad thing about Kate? No terminal version of this beauty.
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 18d
It has a few quirks I utterly despise :(
Like it cannot print invisible characters. Had a script create some broken folders with a BOM character at the beginning. I couldn't access the files in any way except that they appeared in dolphin and ls. Had to delete them via the fucking inode.
I was forced to use VSCode (an open source fork at least) to find out what the fuck was wrong with the input file the script used to generate the folder name.
EnsignWashout@startrek.website · 7 pts · 18d
I was looking at an option to display invisible characters in Kate like last week. So it got better, I guess.
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de · 6 pts · 18d
Only non-printable spaces from what I can tell.
The BOM character does not fall into this category and is still invisible. Try pasting it into Kate. It's between those arrows:
Skullgrid@lemmy.world · 90 pts · 19d
Me no love nano, me brain only can use nano.
E macs scary. vim no let me leave :(
Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip · 19 pts · 18d
You might like micro :) its like nano but with more user friendly features like Ctrl+s for save, and clicking places to change cursor location. I think you have to enable the "cheat sheet" of keyboard commands being visible all the time if you want it to always be showing like I do
It also supports extensions but I don't really care about that lol. I just want something simple with nice ux :)
tutter@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 14d
p sure latest nano can do all that, you can atleast change the default save bindings to ctrl s in the .nanorc file and im p sure most distros include a build of nano that has mouse support. If its supported by the build, its just a settings toggle in the rc file likr the bindings :)
lfox02@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 14d
Micro also has syntax highlighting, multiple buffers with split editors, and theming, among other things. It's pretty dang neat
tutter@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 6d
sounds cool, youve convinced me, gonna grab a copy and check how the feature set compares ✌️
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 11d
less is more,
micro does more than nano,
many names, much confuse.
plateee@piefed.social · 71 pts · 19d
vim, because that's how my father taught me, and how his father's father taught him.
Choose vim! The generational trauma of file editors!
EnsignWashout@startrek.website · 5 pts · 18d
haha!
Sometimes I feel like my side of the holy war isn't engaging in completely good faith.
I might switch sides to emacs if my fingers were long enough to reach the key combinations.
Maybe I'll go try it, anyway!
...
What was the command to exit
vi, again...?alsimoneau@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 18d
The same as for man pages and less and a bunch of other cli tools.
Q. For Quit.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 11d
Ah, I see that your : is silent.
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world · 54 pts · 19d
As a new Linux user who spends as little time editing config files as I can manage, I'm fine with nano.
illusionist@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 19d
I was too untilI switched to opensuse aeon and default is vim instead of nano. I just switched. I don't care. Both are not perfect - i won' create yet another fork just because i want to do it differently. I don't get why vim has so few shortcuts.
felsiq@piefed.zip · 81 pts · 19d
wheezy@lemmy.ml · 10 pts · 19d
Someone's gotta do it. I'm leaving this comment so it's not me.
daggermoon@piefed.world · 3 pts · 19d
I was playing around with Free BSD I think and the default was Vi. I was just like "yeah, no" and gave up. I didn't have wi-fi working so I couldn't install anything else.
daggermoon@piefed.world · 4 pts · 19d
I think Micro is even easier. Nano is good too though.
Digit@lemmy.today · 35 pts · 18d
It's worse than the picture depicts. It's not just the lovers, the elitists and the evangelists, it's the sheer range of choice too, beyond the loudest.
naught101@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 19d
ed is the standard editor
ozymandias117@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 19d
It has an extremely consistent user interface and error reporting!
trem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 19d
?ozymandias117@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 19d
WYGIWYG
provectus@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 18d
And you thought exiting vim was hard. Honestly, I did not know this existed, thanks.
notabot@piefed.social · 26 pts · 19d
Let the editor holy wars (re)start!
Vim is the one true editor, and the heretics who claim otherwise shall be driven forth and sent to
re-educationlinux boot camps to learn the true ways.forbiddencherry@lemmy.today · 14 pts · 19d
Comment could have been a :q!
certified_expert@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
boob_warbler@fedinsfw.app · 1 pts · 12d
I've only ever seen vim users call for holy wars.. I'm happy with my RSI and carpal tunnel syndrome. Emacs till death do me fart.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 11d
Now that i think about it, vim users seem to be annoyed by emacs more than the other way around.
I had an instructor once who said that programmers could debate whether to use vim or Emacs, but system administrators should use vim, hands down.
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works · 26 pts · 19d
Why would you need a text editor when you can just do
cat > file?smh
barzaria@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 19d
This command will literally overwrite the file that you do whenever you try to edit it. You need two >> to append at the end of a file, but it's super-duper hard to put text in the middle of a file from the terminal. That is why people use editors, for sure. Now that I think about it, there probably is some psychopath who uses the actual command line as an editor. They're probably more elitist than Vim users lol.
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 18d
Sounds like a skill issue tbh
18107@aussie.zone · 17 pts · 18d
Excuse me, but real programmers use butterflies.
Digit@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 17d
there's an emacs mode for that
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 18d
Thinking out loud here. Head in a temp file, cat, tail the rest and then overwrite?
DacoTaco@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
Allero@lemmy.today · 24 pts · 18d
First choice: use a normal damn GUI text editor
Second choice: Nano. It's simple and comprehensible, and a best CLI choice for newbies. You can then turn to vim, emacs, or whatever, but don't make your life harder from the get-go
People suggesting to start with Vim are probably the same ones pushing for Arch as a first distro. C'mon.
zerofk@lemmy.zip · 13 pts · 18d
That’s how you breed scrubs who can’t M-x-butterfly. I say give them a distro that boots into vi and starts a background process that block internet access around them. If they manage to quit vi and kill the daemon, they’re ready for Linux.
Allero@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 18d
Lol
cows_are_underrated@feddit.org · 8 pts · 18d
The right choice as long as you don't want to edit code/config files. Trust me, writing code inside libre office is not fun.
cockmushroom@reddthat.com · 10 pts · 18d
Libre office isn't a text editor it's a document processor; more like a gui for something like TeX, or realisticially html, than a program for reading/editing plain text.
Allero@lemmy.today · 8 pts · 18d
Kate is a basic GUI text editor that can highlight syntax, suggest options and do other things useful for code and configs. Comes with KDE (which is a common newbie recommendation) and is available as Flatpak everywhere else.
But sure, there are instances where you should use CLI text editors. If you need to edit text files as root, this is generally the best option. Also, it's the only option for headless setups and SSH. For that, nano will do.
Shanmugha@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18d
Was gonna write that only one true text editor exists. But okay, you are right, of course
BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.world · 23 pts · 19d
I use Micro in the terminal - it offers good desktop integration with keys similar to DEs like ctrl+v and ctrl+c, rather than being terminal centred (e.g. Ctrl+C is usually the standard interrupt/abort key in the terminal). So it's nice if you're mainly in a desktop but pop in to a terminal occasionally and have the DE muscle memory.
I use Kate outside the terminal.
But honestly, which text editor you use depends on what you use it for and how often. Vim is very powerful and allows very fast use & productivity if you learn it properly and probably very useful if you spend a lot of time in the terminal or TTY, but Nano is more straight forward and easy for a lot of basic terminal based work.
Zikeji@programming.dev · 6 pts · 19d
I've been using micro as well recently. But other than that if I'm on a remote server I'll use whatever it has available, starting with nano then vi/vim.
Equinox1289@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 19d
I'd look into Fresh if you want to really have the whole gui-style text editor experience inside a TUI application.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 3 pts · 19d
Micro also comes with preinstalled LSP support (on Debian+Ubuntu, anyway)!
j3tt@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18d
The so-called desktop integration is what I disable in vim. I want to have the terminal in control and use select text to copy instead of entering visual mode. When I want visual mode, I use my keyboard. (:
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 19d
My requirements for a text editor:
Bonus points if it comes pre installed.
smiletolerantly@awful.systems · 13 pts · 19d
Idk it took me 3 attempts to learn (neo)vim, but now every Linux system I SSH in I just go straight for vi(m), because moving around and editing in Nano is just so slow when you're used to vim keys.
I swear I'm not trying to proselytize. People should use whatever they want, and these discussions are pointless. It's all just tradeoffs and getting used to things.
Digit@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 17d
Hah. The text editor I wrote has that covered.
... ignore the bugs.
a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18d
So nano, then.
null@piefed.nullspace.lol · 20 pts · 19d
I install
micro. I intend to usemicro. My fingers typenanoanyways. Every time.lokalhorst@feddit.org · 12 pts · 19d
Time for an alias!
Equinox1289@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 19d
If you haven't, I highly recommend checking out Fresh, it's like micro with even more standard text editor features.
mewtiful@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 18d
Co-Authored-By: Claude
:(
OnASnowyEvening@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 18d
vi because it's everywhere, even on servers where packages can't be downloaded or shouldn't be installed.
ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 18d
This is my reply every time someone suggests nvim. Is it on the servers I use but I'm not an admin for? No? Then it doesn't sound like a great option.
harmbugler@piefed.social · 5 pts · 18d
My favourite editor is the first one I find that's installed
oysvendsen@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 19d
I'm a emacs guy, but nano should be the only one installed by default. The default editor should tell you how to exit!
rtxn@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 18d
oysvendsen@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 18d
Vim myfile.txt will hiwever not show you that
EnsignWashout@startrek.website · 9 pts · 18d
Not our fault everyone blows past the kind offer of
: vimtutoron startup! (I kid. The default editor shouldn't require a class.)You're 100% correct. Nano is a perfectly reasonable default.
That said, it is 2026. It also wouldn't kill us to default to an interactive one-time prompt that defaults to nano, but offers one or two others, and removes itself after setting the user's choice.
fizzle@quokk.au · 16 pts · 19d
Helix is really rad
itrealgood@mander.xyz · 16 pts · 19d
BladeFederation@piefed.social · 12 pts · 19d
Not even Notepad ++? Damn
harmbugler@piefed.social · 11 pts · 18d
Notepad++ doesn't have Notepad's awesome AI features, clearly
BladeFederation@piefed.social · 5 pts · 18d
🤮🤮
Rolive@discuss.tchncs.de · 14 pts · 17d
Nano because I'm too lazy to learn vim or emacs. I want something that works and not something that operates like cheat codes in old video games.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 19d
None of them. I need a texteditor, not an unusable wannabe miracle machine for which you need documentation and a diploma just to exit it.
TheEEEdiot@sh.itjust.works · 25 pts · 19d
So... Nano?
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
Nope. Kate.
Digit@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 17d
Does kate have a tui mode?
... I may have to revisit it again, if it's viable to use when simply ssh'd into another computer.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 17d
Tui mode?
Digit@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 17d
since that was 10 hours ago, i presume you've already searched to discern tui means terminal user interface, ... if that's what your query was about.
EnsignWashout@startrek.website · 2 pts · 18d
But but but...vimtutor is right there on startup - so it's an easily obtained diploma...
I'll see myself out.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 19d
ed is the standard text editor.
lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 18d
man ed;edDone and dusted.
BladeFederation@piefed.social · 11 pts · 19d
Even worse: I like GUI editors like Kate/KDevelop/Geany/VSCode. Unless it is on a server obviously.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 16d
Psh, that's what sshfs is for.
(kidding, I rarely bother with that; micro is way easier when I'm working on my own servers)
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online · 11 pts · 18d
Nothing wrong with Kate. I know how to use Nano because it's an essential skill for when your machine boots into emergency mode, but aside from that editing text from the terminal is lunacy.
rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 18d
Welcome to Team Kate. There are dozens of us!
Anafabula@discuss.tchncs.de · 11 pts · 19d
Helix?
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 19d
I have tried it but I keep going back to vscodium because I'm too lazy to learn to use a new editor
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 11 pts · 18d
I don't understand the issue. I've been using Linux less than a year but I started with a KDE desktop so it came with Kate, Kwrite, and Nano. I've literally never needed anything else.
I've tried out a couple IDEs like Codium and Geany, but I don't see what they offer that Kate doesn't.
I've also at least opened Emacs but I didn't get much further than that.
I use Nano in the terminal when I'm editing config files because I read somewhere that it's safer.
I installed Neovim and Micro but I haven't explored those at all yet. I don't have any problems with Nano.
I tried Pluma but I really only use it for dumping lists.
For the most part I use Kate, but for simpler notes I use Kwrite just to keep them in separate spots on my launcher.
I don't see why this is such an issue though.
cows_are_underrated@feddit.org · 7 pts · 18d
You usually don't take the time to learn vim or Emacs just to write some notes. The real value of such powerful and highly customisable text editors only shows itself when you are editing lots and lots of text on a regular basis (e.g. codimg, writing blogs or any other form of writing)
The advantage vim and emacs have is, that they have keybindings for about everything you could ever want. This has the advantage, that once you know how to use them, your working speed massively increases, but it takes quite some time to learn the keybindings. Another advantage and disadvantage of (neo) vim and emacs is, that both are being modified by config files. This comes at the advantage of being able to modify about everything about your editor, but means that sometimes it can be quite hard to implement a specific behaviour. The next advantage is, that your configuration becomes easily portable and extensible. Implementing a specific behaviour often only requires copy pasting a 15 year old stackoverflow post and if you want to move to a new device, you just have to grab your config files and are good to go.
Emacs also has orgmode directly integrated into it, which can be used to write text and format it (similar to Markdown, but much more powerful) and even export it to other formats like HTML or LaTeX. As you might expect, orgmode also has its own keybindings. This means, that you can write your documents inside emacs [orgmode], use all the powerful text formatting tools and keybindings and then share your work in a nicely formatted and portable way.
jenesaisquoi@feddit.org · 10 pts · 18d
wetsoggybread@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 17d
I feel called out but the only time I'm editing a file is tweaking a config or .env file and its just so simple for me
jenesaisquoi@feddit.org · 1 pts · 17d
signature look of superiority
eurodyne@piefed.world · 10 pts · 19d
pico!
But nano will do ;)
this@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 18d
All I'm gonna say is than nano is installed on almost every Linux os and has the keyboard shortcuts written on the UI.
cockmushroom@reddthat.com · 4 pts · 18d
Who doesn't have vi/m?
Fwiw, helix also gives visual feedback on bindings if a key is a table for mutiple bindings.
this@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 17d
I'm sorry I don't see how that's relevant to my point.
I'm saying that of all the text editors, nano is the one that usually takes the least amount of effort to learn and set up. Both of those options require either learning or set up, so why would I choose them if convinience is what I'm after?
cockmushroom@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 17d
I was just asking which distros don't have vi/m. The helix point was an aside. It wasn't combative, just curious.
this@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 16d
I wouldn't know tbh. I've never had any reason to use anything other than nano for a terminal text editor.
Avicenna@programming.dev · 9 pts · 19d
Do you have a minute talk about our lord and saviour Vim?
Nullpwn@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 19d
I'm too old to keep lying that I don't like nano..
kirisamemarisa@lemmy.eco.br · 9 pts · 19d
i am quite fond of kate
Syltti@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18d
Finally! Another sane person!
EnsignWashout@startrek.website · 2 pts · 18d
kateis fantastic, all around.Ctrl+Alt+V makes the key bindings tolerable. (Vi mode)
MrSoup@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 19d
Micro >
AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 18d
Emacs with Vim’s modal editing.
sudoer777@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 19d
I see the Helix cucumber got left at the grocery store
djsiete@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 18d
Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 18d
Helix is very enjoyable to use
cockmushroom@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 18d
For now. Soon it'll be plugin slopped.
Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 17d
I already use it without plugins (since it doesn't support them). Why wouldn't I just not install the plugins?
cockmushroom@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 17d
That's not the issue so much as it leads to the collapse of serious development. Better put, if these plugins are so important, why not add them to the editor? Instead we get turing complete configuration and all the performance degradation downstream of it.
Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 16d
Hmm I suppose I agree. I hope it doesn't turn out that way. If it does, let's fork it!
DigDoug@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 18d
I use Vim, which has some really handy tricks that I use somewhat often (eg, type
:r!followed by a terminal command and it will add the standard output of said command to the bottom of your file).That being said, there's nothing wrong with Nano. Most distros come with it out of the box nowadays, and its learning curve is practically nonexistent compared to the alternatives.
EnsignWashout@startrek.website · 2 pts · 18d
Yes. Lack of
:r!is what keeps me from using most editors that aren'tvim.There's so many things I don't remember well enough to type accurately from memory, but I know the command to fetch quickly.
VoteNixon2016@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 19d
Notepad++ in a Windows XP VM
printerhell@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 19d
Notepad++ is the one thing i really miss on linux. I use it daily for work and i just haven’t found an equivalent on linux.
Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 0 pts · 19d
Sublime Text can do 98% of what Notepad++ does and then a lot more too.
printerhell@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 19d
No doubt about it. Most editors have the same capabilities or better. It’s just when you use something for 40+ hours a week you know it inside and out.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 19d
I've recently switched to writing my notes in markdown in a code editor, since I already have one open most of the time. vsCode for work (I do a lot of PowerShell), vsCodium at home, although I'm sure there's better options.
My one gripe with Notepad++ is that I haven't found any easy way to do dark mode with it. You can make the window "chrome" dark mode, and you can make general text background black and text white, but then that screws up the language specific and file diff themes/coloring.
There's probably a collection of importable settings for that somewhere online though.
HouseWolf@pawb.social · 3 pts · 19d
Apparently I'm the only person on this site that knows about Notepadqq.
BartyDeCanter@piefed.social · 8 pts · 19d
Helix
verdigris@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 19d
Nano/micro are great for people who need a terminal text editor but don't want to learn anything to use it.
If you do want to put some time into learning, it really doesn't take long to get to a point of base competency in emacs or vim -- less than an hour for sure to just be able to move around in the document and have a basic understanding of the editing controls.
Both are hugely deep systems that you can keep learning for years, but only at the pace that you need; most tasks can be accomplished pretty easily with a bunch of inputs, but there's usually a much faster way if you know the shortcuts.
As for the difference, vim is more modal -- you switch to editing mode, do some editing, then switch to typing mode and type. Most commands are one to three sequential button presses. For some more exotic functionality you use the command line to type a command, which has auto-complete.
On the other hand emacs is chorded, meaning you use multiple simultaneous keys to do functions, usually a modifier key like ctrl + something else. This gives you more direct power while actually typing, but IMO has a bit steeper of a learning curve, and I just personally don't love the chorded inputs, I think they're more work to input than the sequences in vim. But either editor will give you unprecedented power over text with minimal fuss.
I personally use Helix, which is basically just a slightly different take on Vim, as well as taking inspiration from Kakoune which is another competitor. It's got really nice modern defaults and I like the way that Kakoune treats selections in contrast to Vim.
BitUnWise@programming.dev · 4 pts · 19d
The "object-verb" of kakoune is much easier (to me) than "verb-object" of vim
Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de · 8 pts · 19d
Well now, sed of course!
calango@programming.dev · 3 pts · 19d
the goat
Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz · 7 pts · 19d
Do you need operating system? Select emacs
Do you want to be elite coder? Select (neo)vim
Do you need to just edit .conf files? Select nano
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz · 7 pts · 19d
This is kinda irrelevant for a new user, but vi/vim is available literally everywhere. If you need to shh onto another machine and edit some files, it's the only editor you can reliably expect to exist.
BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 18d
Kate master race of KDE
nixx@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 17d
The reasons us elders use VI is because on a new installation, it was the only thing available until:
You are lucky enough to find a compiled version of PINE/PICO, or
You have the compiler installed, and can get the source code and build it yourself.
For some reason, some elitists decided that if you don't know that, then you are a failure. But honestly, when modern distros started coming out with WYSIWYG-type editors, it was a relief, even though I reverted to VI/VIM because of muscle-memory, I do not push it on new users. It's the same argument people make for driving manual vs automatic, sure it's useful, but when was the last time you even saw a manual car? (At least in North America).
You want to live dangerously, go ahead and put NetBSD with just the basics and leave the rest of us who want to do something useful alone.
ivn@tarte.nuage-libre.fr · 7 pts · 19d
Commit heresy with evil-mode Emacs.
jdr@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 19d
This is the dao
AstroLightz@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 18d
Best choice: use whatever comes pre-installed.
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 18d
Vim it is.
Digit@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 17d
I often revisit the notion of making a linux distro with scant more than just mc (& mcedit).
MasterNerd@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 18d
I learned vim (technically vi) because it was the only editor available on these tiny liveusbs I would use for work. It was literally my only option. Once I got used to the motions, using any text editor without vim motions felt unusable to me.
cows_are_underrated@feddit.org · 1 pts · 18d
Same for emacs. At this point my emacs keybindings feel more intuitive to me than the standard keybinds like Ctrl+C/-V to copy and paste (in emacs its Meta + W to copy and CTRL + Y to paste (Yank))
moendopi@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 18d
Kate and micro
Yttra@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 18d
Nano, because it was the first I'd ever used and it does everything I need it to do (i.e. very little, edits the occasional config file and that's it)
nonentity@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 17d
dd or GTFO.
HawtP0tat0@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 17d
head n-1 > tmp && echo "line replacement" >> tmp && tail -n+1 >> tml && mv tmp orig
whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 19d
nano lovers? Is there such thing? Nano was the one I used until I learned how to do basics on vim, nano is just the more intuitive/easiest way to just edit a file and it's enough most of the time
tetov@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 19d
certified_expert@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 18d
Poor souls of those that haven't found the way of the Gnu.
May the Gnu have mercy of your lost ways and show you the light
M-x show-light RETMay the macros never lack in your life,
May your parentheses be balanced,
And may your init.el pass with no fails.
Emen
barzaria@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 19d
Man, I have wanted to learn Emacs for a while, but those shortcut keys kill my hands and soul in general. I know about Evil mode, but for whatever reason I just gotta use default controls when I play a new game. The graphics are terrible, but they say that the gameplay for emacs is pretty great. I guess you could say that Emacs is the Dark Souls of text editors.
juipeltje@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 18d
What really helps for me is pressing control with the inside of my pinky knuckle, and alt with your thumb. That way your fingers can stay on the home row. If you have a very low profile keyboard or are on a laptop, best you can do is probably remap capslock to be control.
Kanda@reddthat.com · 6 pts · 18d
You guys edit text?
mirshafie@europe.pub · 8 pts · 18d
Claude, remove spotify from sources.list
sudoer777@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 17d
I have completed the following tasks that you requested:
Anything else I can help you with?
kevinsky@feddit.nl · 6 pts · 18d
Nano is objectively the most beginner friendly of the bunch.
kustix@programming.dev · 6 pts · 19d
mcedit😎
lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 19d
Came here just for this comment
realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip · 5 pts · 18d
Honestly, since I switched to vim and got through the first month of "why the fuck am I doing this to myself", I just can't go back. Especially once you get to customizing it, installing plugins, themes etc ... it's better than any IDE out there.
nil@piefed.ca · 5 pts · 19d
Choose helix. Native LSP support comes with it, and you will lose vim friends.
turbowafflz@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 18d
I miss atom, when it was discontinued I tried vscodium and immediately hated it, then used kate for a while, and now use neovim. neovim is nice but atom was just so good
HamsterRage@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 18d
Pulsar is the answer for you.
turbowafflz@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18d
Yeah, but a lot less of the plugins are maintained now and teletype is gone
HamsterRage@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 18d
Google says Teletype for Pulsar exists.
18107@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 18d
https://pulsar-edit.dev/
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 16d
Did it solve the resource-guzzling issues that Atom and VS Code, like most Electron applications, suffer from? Because TBH I did enjoy using Atom and Code, but the RAM use was insane and IIRC copying your config to a new machine was kind of annoying. Though Kate also has its issues (the configuration is also annoying to copy to a new machine, it changes the way its colorschemes are defined every couple of years (forcing you do redo your colorscheme customizations), and the newer versions started struggling with my 10 000+ lines note/calender files).
BurnedDonutHole@ani.social · 5 pts · 18d
Can I introduce you to the miracles of fresh? https://getfresh.dev/
juipeltje@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 18d
I'm using Emacs, but after getting a bit used to the vanilla keybindings for the past couple of weeks i still feel like vim-like motions are better, so now i'm playing around with a helix-mode package to emulate helix keybindings (i was using helix before switching to emacs). One change i did make though is bind end-of-line and beginning-of-line to $ and 0 like in proper vim. Helix uses END ans HOME keys for this and i hate it lol, no idea why they thought it was a good idea to move that far away from the home row for that.
rozodru@piefed.world · 1 pts · 18d
If you like Emacs but want to keep using vim style binds then check out DOOM Emacs.
juipeltje@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
I did try evil-mode, but i just couldn't get used to the differences between vim and helix, so that's why i went with helix-mode instead.
Tattorack@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 18d
I want whatever is closest to Notepad++. Honestly, KDE already comes with that built in.
devaly@ani.social · 5 pts · 19d
gram
Equinox1289@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 19d
Micro or even better is Fresh. Make use of the modern terminal features for mouse interaction, text highlighting, and standard shortcuts.
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 19d
Vim or Zed
echedeylr@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 19d
Nano for TUI and Pulsar for GUI.
Fmstrat@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 18d
My colon quit.
untropvertimide@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 17d
I use
kevincox@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 19d
I really don't care what you use but I highly recommend picking something extensible or fully featured. No need to cut yourself off of valuable tools.
(Also I use Neovim BTW)
crakila@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 17d
kate when I am using GUI and vim when I am using CLI.
cepelinas@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 19d
nano and kate I edit text not books of configs.
DrunkAnRoot@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 19d
neovim
Macaroni_ninja@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 18d
Also the naming of these apps are incredible confusing. Im using linux full time for over a year now (Mint, Bazzite) and still cant remember the names of half the damn utility apps. Its a good thing most distros show you the most likely thing if you start typing in some slightly relevant text to the search.
My idiot brain hardwired by years of windows use: -I need to download an app... Something, something app store
Linux: -You mean Bazaar?
-Aw yisss, but also want to make a screenshot, something to do with snipping tool?
-Spectacle maybe?
-Fuck yeah!
Q_the_misanthrope@startrek.website · 3 pts · 17d
I feel you.
Long time Linux user but full time at home about a year. I had to rename Spectacle to snip because I can not remember to type s-p-e-c instead of snip. It wasn’t worth fighting anymore so I just renamed the shortcut.
Also struggle with LibreCalc opening when I search for calculator. I just can’t remember kcalc either. But I won’t rename it, trying to struggle through. Just have two decades of muscle memory to overcome.
stoy@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 19d
Just go with ed, it is the standard for a reason.
DeLancre@piefed.social · 4 pts · 19d
Gedit for docs (plain and simple + have basic spelling/code highlighting), kate for weird things like JSON (have actual tools to fix spacing/tabulation)
zebidiah@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 17d
Nano in the CLI, kate in the GUI
Sparrow_1029@programming.dev · 4 pts · 18d
Who loves nano??
khanh@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 18d
me
Sparrow_1029@programming.dev · 2 pts · 18d
Well alright! it's pretty silly, but I've never bothered to learn nano, despite the key commands being listed right there in the program. BUT I did spend a mario-teaches-typing amount of time learning vim years ago because... masochist, I guess? haha
Glad you like nano, and I'm really not a purist about editors or anything. Actually, a co-worker of mine uses emacs and our company uses slack. If you type the shortcode :vim:, the emacs logo appears, and :emacs: makes the vim logo, because it makes us both laugh, and what editor you use doesn't matter
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 16d
I definitely spend some amount of time to learn vim basics, just to see what the fuss is about. Never got it, so it's back to non-modal editors.
dadarobot@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 19d
vim
TaterTot@piefed.social · 4 pts · 19d
Vim or neovim. At first just because I wanted to learn it for fun. But now because it after I memorized a few core commands, it really did just feel great to use. Quick and surprisingly easy.
rozodru@piefed.world · 4 pts · 18d
I constantly switch between Nixvim, DOOM Emacs, helix, and NVChad. I can never settle on one editor for long. I don't know why.
cows_are_underrated@feddit.org · 4 pts · 18d
Why is this post not mentioning the most important editor of all time? Why is this post deliberately missing out the standard text editor ed, that wastes no system resource on unnecessary output like help messages or a text buffer. If you are coming to Linux you should really start looking into learning ed, since, well it is the standard Texteditor overall.
https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html
DarkCloud@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 17d
Noobs get hit with friendly fire.
pewpew@feddit.it · 4 pts · 19d
Ok hear me out: Microsoft Edit
fta@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 19d
Nvim
Marduk73@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 18d
serious question:
what are you using your text editor for that requires all these features?
i just hot down quick notes, maybe an address, quick and bare budget, or a short list of things.
the kind of things i thought people use text editors for.
more robust documents, libre office or word.
I'm not making a joke, I'm really wondering why it matters? isn't it just notepad or what am i missing?
AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 18d
A serious answer:
The “editor wars” are predominantly fought by people who work in IT (system admins, developers, etc.), which requires using the terminal frequently or is often the only tool at their disposal.
Some folks also use specific editors because of their text editing capabilities. Vim’s modal editing is very intuitive and fast, while Emacs’ Org Mode feature set can be a sole reason to put up with Emacs.
::: spoiler Tangential A case can be made that modern programming does not really require a terminal since IDEs meet its needs. But the debate becomes more subjective and less objective.
I work in IT, use emacs configured with vim’s modal editing, even though my employer provides expensive IDE licenses for me to use.
I shifted IDEs to Vim because the former were too slow to open some of the code. Later I shifted to Emacs, trading some of that speed for Org mode.
Now, I treat Emacs as the sole software to interact with the computer, as much as I can. :::
Marduk73@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 18d
amazing thanks. i really felt in the dark prior to this.
save_the_humans@leminal.space · 1 pts · 18d
Vim + snippets made writing math with LaTeX a legitimately enjoyable experience during my masters degree. LaTeX commands are a pain to type out without snippets. Does any other editor have this?
Also not sure if other editors let you save your session, tabs/splits/windows, and easily switch your view. That and registers, marks, macros, and the ability to search and rerun commands are too convenient. Vim for both large and small coding projects for me.
Agent641@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 19d
Micro is pretty good
markz@suppo.fi · 3 pts · 19d
gnome text editor
ian@feddit.uk · 3 pts · 17d
I think it comes with a text editor already built in. I don't need a text editor though.
Coki91@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 19d
sudo sed -i
pemptago@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 18d
Came here to see my helix fam, was not disappointed.
Digit@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 18d
sudoer777@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 17d
I thought MCEdit was a Minecraft world editing tool
Digit@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 17d
mcedit came before your "MCEdit".
same as bedrock linux came before bedrock version of minecraft for linux.
minecraft ((at least) twice) further confounded searches for the already obscure foss tools.
mc = midnight commander.
mcedit = midnight commander's inbuilt text editor.
mr_satan@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 18d
neovim for terminal based editing and jetbrains for a more full fledged project experience.
ActualGrapesTasteGreen@piefed.zip · 3 pts · 19d
You never hear about Nice Editor but I'd like to submit it for consideration. It's no IDE, but I like it better than nano.
the_q@piefed.social · 3 pts · 19d
sudo nano /etc/fstab
luciferofastora@feddit.org · 3 pts · 18d
Linux has made great strides to being approachable for new users. The agony of choice for so many things (distro, editor, nearly any tool family with more than one option) and the factionalism around the options is probably one of the few big obstacles left.
I don't have a solution for the factionalism. I'd put forth a suggestion for a simple "standard" choice (Kate/gedit for GUI and nano for CLI; I personally use vim, but I think nano is more approachable) but I'm sure someone will disagree and we're back to square one.
Kangae_Hishiryo@scribe.disroot.org · 2 pts · 17d
Nano's still really annoying, Micro is the most approachable one because it isn't modal.
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 19d
tag yourself i'm the french vanilla sublime text softly reassuring to safety
TheOneCurly@feddit.online · 3 pts · 18d
Started using helix after vim and neovim went full llm brain.
cockmushroom@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 18d
What happened back over there?
TheOneCurly@feddit.online · 2 pts · 13d
Every single commit has become co-authored by claude. It's not like even just allowing LLM contributions or something, the main devs are full on vibe coding.
18107@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 18d
I liked Sublime enough to pay for it. It has become my primary text editor at home.
I also like Atom/Pulsar, but it takes a but too long to open for my use case.
Obsidian isn't exactly a text editor, but it fits many of the use cases. It may be closed source, but all the files are accessible and usable if the app ever disappears.
I want to use vim more, but I'm lazy, and the learning curve keeps putting me off. I might get there eventually.
Nano is ol' reliable. When everything else failed, Nano was still there for me and worked perfectly.
nieminen@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 18d
I use nano for simple text edits, anything more and I use sublime, or code.
Used to develop c++ in emacs though, never got the benefit of VIM, super hard to use.
pH3ra@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 19d
Micro because it's literally nano with more familiar shortcuts
Marn@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 18d
Yep and mouse support it's very intuitive
anewfox@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 18d
yeah, it's all true, lol.
it's emacs, though.
ragas@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 18d
I used to use nano.
Since I learned how to exit vim, without murdering it, I use vim. Vim is mostly my choice becasue deleting and moving lines is incedibly fast and it has the very best code highlighting.
Sunrosa@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 18d
hx
thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 17d
Another enlightened individual
basxto@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 19d
Leafpad, in the terminal nano and vscodium for code. If I really have to open code in the terminal: vim
jpablo68@infosec.pub · 3 pts · 18d
Gentoo picked vi for me about 20 years ago...
farmgineer@nord.pub · 3 pts · 18d
Commandline? Nano (or Pico or whatever) if it exists. Else vim/vi. I originally used emacs back in the day. However, for anything else, I'm using the closest thing to notepad++ I can find at the time.
mmmm@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 19d
vis
CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 19d
I use both vim and nano.
EnsignWashout@startrek.website · 1 pts · 18d
Sacrilege!
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net · 3 pts · 19d
nano lovers 😂
palordrolap@fedia.io · 2 pts · 19d
Some of us have been around long enough to have used pine as our main e-mail client, thus we learned to love pico and now we love nano.
Damn kids these days. Get off my lawn.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net · 2 pts · 18d
I remember using pine on some occasions but I mostly used mutt which was using $EDITOR to write emails. Which for me was vi.
I can't imagine anyone doing serious work using nano but it's totally possible the problem is with my imagination, not nano itself.
smh@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 18d
I mostly edit config files. Nano has syntax highlighting, search, find+replace. What else do I need?
Plus it's easy to walk someone else through using it, if I need to do tech support.
palordrolap@fedia.io · 1 pts · 18d
mutt wasn't a thing on the system where I learned pine. The first version existed out in the world, but the sysadmin probably thought it too new to install if they'd heard of it at all. We had three choices: mailx, elm and pine. pine granted access to newsgroups - the system had an NNTP server - as well as e-mail so it was a no-brainer for most of us.
smh@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 18d
It was a sad day when my college discontinued pine support.
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 19d
I use an IDE when I want to code, and Kwrite for when I just need a simple-ass .txt file
I was a big fan of Atom before it died, and I recently found out that it now has a spiritual successor, https://pulsar-edit.dev/ which I've been using for when I do coding projects
trem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 19d
Kate with an LSP server installed, for the language you want to code in, is also pretty decent. In case, you want less of a difference to KWrite. 🙂
cyclonedusk@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 17d
i miss notepad plus plus, that's pretty much the only thing i wish i still had from before linux though.
NickwithaC@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 17d
Gedit
kalpol@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 17d
I just found that notepadqq is no longer maintained. :(
SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 17d
You and I both. I have nostalgia from years of using it in grad school for R. I found Kate is pretty close, but NPP runs fine in Bottles.
selokichtli@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 17d
Gedit, mousepad, geany or kate may help you forget Notepad++, which is truly great software.
bruno@federation.network · 2 pts · 17d
@cyclonedusk@lemmy.blahaj.zone Notepad Next is an alternative to Notepad++ in Linux. Here a (german) article from @gnulinux@social.anoxinon.de :
https://gnulinux.ch/notepad-next
@calango@programming.dev
Aufgehtsabgehts@feddit.org · 2 pts · 19d
I wish I could look at it from a neutral position, but emacs is just too perfect to recommend anything else.
ScottyTheEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 11d
The first step of any linux install is installing vim/neovim. Anything else is sheer apostasy
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 2 pts · 18d
I use Vim. I am not a power user by any stretch but it's what I use. I know like three shortcuts, which is enough to make me marginally faster in vim than nano. I don't really feel much desire to learn a terminal editor and be super good with it. There are other things I'm more interested in spending my time on if I feel motivated to learn.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 18d
I just use the inbuilt text editor in linux mint.
Or a full fledged IDE when I edit code.
blargh513@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 19d
xed
Suck it dorks!
CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18d
But real *nix'ers use
edYou may as well start there. You'll be using it eventually once you inevitably develop the same passionate idolization of Unix that I, the righteous self appointed evangelist of all things good && just && Unix possess.
/s
Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 17d
When I uninstalled Windows and switched to Linux (CachyOS (which is Arch BTW)) I also took the time to free myself from VScode to completely escape Microsoft's fuckery.
I learned how to use Neovim. I've got a configuration that I really like and I took care to make it portable enough that I can just copy over the init.lua file to set everything up on a different computer.
However this is only earned through weeks of Lua hell. You are effectively building your own editor from almost the ground up. I only recommend Neovim if you want the first medium scale project you work on to be Neovim itself.
Marduk73@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 19d
i use whatever is default for my distro installation. then feel "off" because it's not notepad.
tyler@programming.dev · 2 pts · 19d
I use vim, but not because it’s good. I’m just not up for learning something else right now
guy@piefed.social · 2 pts · 17d
My distro came with Nano, so here I am
heliotrope@retrofed.com · 2 pts · 18d
Nano, Micro, JOE,
ee(1). Those are my suggestions.UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18d
Micro. What you are looking for is micro. It's great
sumsinj@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18d
I use nvim/ vim just because i was new and didn't know anything I could edit on an ssh connection with beside vim. And it isn't that hard, using lazyvim atm (still new and dont have time to configure myself) and if I can just use the mouse if I am too stupid, not that hard. But it get more and more convenient as time goes on. You encounter enough times and just think to yourself "is there a better way?" and most of the time there is! Just start with "i", "" and ":wq".
nroth@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18d
Who uses nano?
Allero@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 18d
Me
Waterpumpee@lemmus.org · 2 pts · 19d
VS Code gang
ivn@tarte.nuage-libre.fr · 4 pts · 19d
Or VSCodium if you value free and open source software.
highbank@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 18d
Comparing an Operating System with text editors doesn't make any sense.
Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
I still use pico.
late_pessimistic@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 18d
alexquiniou@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 17d
I'm using vscode.
JohnSmith@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 19d
JOVE all the way!
plombirka@mk.ilyamikcoder.com · 1 pts · 17d
@calango@programming.dev ed(1).
Jiral@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 19d
Use whatever you want. I use nano, why? Because all I need it for is to do some simple config edits in the terminal emulator and it does all I need while keeping it simple.
atopi@piefed.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 18d
I love gram
communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz · 1 pts · 17d
Gram with a modifed helix
FreddyNO@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 17d
Only Fresh
late_pessimistic@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 18d
I am no coder, so I only ever need to modify configs or write down my thoughts. nano for configs, Standard Notes for thoughts
Jiral@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 19d
Use whatever you want. I use nano, why? Because all I need it for is to do some simple config edits in the terminal emulator and it does all I need while keeping it simple.
WorkingPie@feddit.online · 1 pts · 18d
Kate and Geany are where its at tbh.
xcutie@linux.community · 1 pts · 18d
joe. And I don't even really know why.
randamumaki@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 18d
And then there's me on Geany...
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 18d
Nano is too barebones. I just want the tui equivalent of Gedit or Kwrite or something.
Kangae_Hishiryo@scribe.disroot.org · 3 pts · 17d
Micro is the one you're looking for.
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 17d
It does look promising, I'll have to try it the next time I have to remove the dust from the terminal just to edit a config file one time for the next several months.
Bluewing@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
Having gone thrugh the litany or editors over the years. I have stripped down my needs to nano. I just need a quick edit here and there on occiasions.
Kangae_Hishiryo@scribe.disroot.org · 1 pts · 17d
Micro.
I hate modal keybindings (Vim, Nano and Emacs, all alike; though the Object-Verb paradigm looks promising for me, but until now, nothing's better than quasimodal CUA/spring-loaded CUA).
Kangae_Hishiryo@scribe.disroot.org · 3 pts · 17d
Also Kate and KWrite.
bruno@federation.network · 1 pts · 17d
@calango@programming.dev Geany and Notepad Next.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 18d
The reason why I'm on team Vim is because it's standard. A copy of it is installed on pretty much every Unix-like system out there. Vi is built into Busybox.
iopq@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18d
If it's standard why does my distro not ship it
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 18d
Someone deliberately chose to break with POSIX compliance?
iopq@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
It only ships with vi
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 17d
For the point I'm making, that's close enough.
I will sometimes play with the weirdest little electronics, like a smart outlet or something, and the damn thing will have a little Linux distro running out of Flash and there's no room to install anything but it's got Vi on it, often as part of Busybox or Toybox. Nano might not be installed, emacs almost certainly isn't, Vi or Vim almost certainly WILL be in there. For if you ever need to edit wpa_supplicant.conf on your coffee maker. Because we live in a world that contains that hell sentence.
iopq@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 17d
For the point I'm making, I don't have vim and never used it because I've never installed it
Willie169@infosec.pub · 0 pts · 18d
I use Neovim with this config https://github.com/Willie169/nvim-config
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 0 pts · 18d
"New? Nano. Wanna try another because you're comfortable now? Do it." Problem solved.