On my laptop, I update my bashrc on Excel, in Wine, then export it as a PDF, OCR to .md, Pandoc it to an .Org, and then finally, write it down on paper and re-type it on my phone’s Termux’s Emacs instance, then TRAMP it to my PC, in the other room.
I use biebian, btw.
Nah… vim users fight emacs users, but not nano users. Wrong league. We do not beat little children ;)
Nano is more like fast food. It’s easy and convenient, but it makes you feel a little guilty and dirty afterwards.
Nano is the tool that people use when they don’t have a need for TUI editors in general and therefore don’t want to have to memorize how people with teletypes decided things should have been done 75 years ago and who also don’t want to get dragged into endless pointless bickering arguments about which set of greybeards was objectively right about their sets of preferences.
I’m glad people enjoy the editors they use and also I just wanna change a single fuckin line in a config file every once in a while without needing to consult a reference guide.
Vim felt like having superpowers when I started with it, after being spoiled by helix it feels like a relic though
I don’t have much to say about nano, except the hotkey bindings are weird and unnatural.
They make sense, but they feel wrong.
How about micro
And yet Emacs users don’t fight vim users. Emacs users decided vim’s interface was pretty cool and added it to Emacs. Somehow people still call it a war though.
Bruh 😂 the Emacs user community absolutely constantly shit on Vim users. When they added Vi(m) bindings they literally named it ‘evil mode’, and they constantly make fun of people who use it, and spacemacs, and the latest flavor of (neo)vi(m), and all the extensions necessary to make vim halfway useful as an ide, etc etc etc.
Evil or the extensible vi layer is super popular and improves the one area that emacs was lacking i prefer the emacs keybinds but have never seen peeps chat shit about it
Which Emacs community? I’ve been following it for ages in a few places (Reddit is the most common) and I literally do not encounter any of that. Calling it evil was humor - as if people who went to all the bother making it would be trying to push people away…
Using the evil package is very popular and often recommended, which means literally using it like vim, but with all the Emacs ability on top. I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about.
Same here.
The biggest diss I have on emacs users, as a vim user, is that emacs is the only text editor where people routinely need to keep a book about it on their desk!
I used to work with a bunch of emacs guys and they all had an emacs book or two on their desk or as a monitor stand. They usually also had one on awk and/or Perl to go with it.
I’m sure they’d probably make fun of me for being unable to edit a file with anything but my specific vim config, which is not compatible with any other human’s vim config.
(I would never seriously judge someone on their editor, but I will bust an emacs users chops and accept a good natured jab back)
Oh to be clear, it’s all humor. At least mostly, I’m sure there are RMS level fanatics somewhere that truly believe some of the BS.
This is something as old as time. I’ve seen it prolifically on Reddit (though not in the Emacs community, they generally discourage memes), various Linux forums, old Usenet, various programming forums… I’m not trying to be evasive, but it’s hard to provide examples that aren’t specifically cherry picked, which wouldn’t benefit the conversation much.
There’s even a Wikipedia page dedicated to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war
How close to vim’s functionality is evil mode? I’ve been toying with the idea of learning Emacs but I rely on Vim’s langmap and that is rarely implemented in Vim emulations / bindings.
Although I came from vi (pre-vim and pre-evil) and still have the muscle memory, I don’t and haven’t used it myself.
I hear it described as a “nearly complete” and “very comprehensive”. There is definitely a solid community of people using and enjoying it, but on the other hand there are always some reports of getting tired of having to work through, and sometimes extend, an additional interface layer, so in the long run being happier to just adopt the default bindings.
I know there are a few areas where trying to follow common vim workflows doesn’t work as well. Historically the performance of line number display been weak in Emacs, though I believe it’s recently much improved. A lot of people seem to make heavy and constant use of it in vim but conversely for me (and I think it’s more common in Emacs) it’s only an occasional, transient need when some external log or error quotes a line number, so I have them only displayed when I hit the go-to-line binding.
Overall, I think the most frustrating issues people have trying to adopt Emacs from vim are due to trying to impose their specific familiar vim workflows. The most obvious example is people concerned with startup time, but for more typical Emacs workflows it’s a non-issue. Users typically stay in Emacs rather than jumping in and out of it from a terminal (and if you really want that workflow, you run one instance as a daemon and pop up a new client to it instantly). My Emacs instance’s uptime usually matches my computer’s uptime.
The draw of Emacs is not about it only being an editor so much as a comprehensive and programmable text environment. It is a lisp-based text-processing engine that can run numerous applications, the primary being an editor (the default, or evil, or others…) but also countless other applications like file managers, VC clients, subprocess management and many others. It 95% replaces the terminal for me, and many other tools. So it’s the environment through which you view and manipulate all things text that is very accessible to modify and extend to fit your needs. Hence the joke about it being an OS is pretty apt, though to believe it needs a good editor implies vim isn’t a good editor ;).
I once fixed my bashrc file with libreoffice
calm down satan
I regularly fix my bashrc file with Notepad. I run it in Wine because I cbf to RealVNC from my Windows CE media server.
(n.b: None of this is real, I wrote it to upset people, I’m sorry)
I prefer Office 365 online.
Come back after your uploaded it to the cloud and edited it using Google docs.
nano friends rise up!
I too use nano.
alias nano="vi -y"Just tried it in my terminal and I couldn’t exit, lol
sorry, i didn’t tell how to quit. it’s
ctrl+qThanks, I finally got my access to the terminal back.
just when you thought you knew how to exit vim lol
also, this is vim’s “easy” mode.
ln -sf /bin/nano /bin/vi
I like Nano. I think it is quite good. There, I said it.
Edit a file, writing a quick shell script or whatever in the terminal. Nano is great. I don’t see any use in learning vim or emacs. If I need something more I’m going use a gui editor anyway.
Don’t get triggered anyone it’s just my preference
This is my thought process exactly.
I get it, for a power user, vim is probably incredibly powerful. However, I just want to edit text files. I don’t want a text editor where I need a cheat sheet just to save my changes and quit.
Funny, that’s what I hate about Nano. The key binds seem completely random to me and the programs solution to this is to display a cheatsheet on the screen
Control+W = "Where is," Control+O = "Overwrite", Control+X = “Exit.”
Makes just enough sense to me, and those are really the only three binds I ever need for editing config files.
I don’t want to come off like a vim hater, because I do believe it when people say it’s powerful, but… I don’t need powerful. I just need to edit text files.
Well hello there!
Looks like you only got one so far.
There are dozens of us!
nah you’re wrong
Why do you all say that? There were no replies when I added mine so that’s why I said what I said.
Micro, hell yea!
Made the switch as well thanks to the modern key bindings
nano gang
Gross
They hate’us cause they anus.
Vim is pretty easy for me because I’m used to it. Nano is very difficult to use for me because I’ve rarely used it.
I was Nano user and I liked it. After I learned to use Vim, I liked it more. Now when I use nano it’s frustrating to use and I can do things much faster and easier in vim 😅
Opposite here. I got started with Gentoo back in the day of building things from the ground up. Their tutorials all used nano and I just got used to using that. I think when I had casually tried to mess with linux previously, old Mandrake and Redhat in the '90s, I always used the GUI editors, but I also didn’t have a ton of time to mess with it and my hardware wasn’t well-supported.
Same. Stage 1 install will forever be a core memory for me.
Sometimes you don’t even have the luxury of nano. Any moderately advanced Linux user should probably learn the basics of vi. Just knowing how to insert text and save it can fix a system that’s stuck in recovery. Even if it’s just to add a comment in front of a line in a config file.
I do like that some distros make visudo use Nano instead.
you can change that really easily
Sometimes you don’t even have the luxury of vi. Any moderately advanced Linux user should probably learn the basics of sed. Just knowing how to insert text and save it can fix a system that’s stuck in recovery. Even if it’s just to add a comment in front of a line in a config file.
When does that even happen? If you have nano installed, wouldn’t it work too?
Not in rescue mode. If you can’t mount your root partition because something was fudged in /etc/fstab, for example, you may be stuck in recovery and depending on your distribution, it may not have nano in that minimalist mode.
For me it also happens when I install a VM of Debian using the small image, on my dedicated server in a data center. The company hosting the server requires a special network configuration and AFAIK, there’s only vi. So i need to use the console to access the VM and from there, edit /etc/network/something with vi to setup the network. Once done I can reboot and install the rest of the software over the network, including nano.
I’ve been using Linux for more than two decades. Before nano I was using pico, but it also required to have pine/alpine installed. So knowing the basics of vi has often been helpful over the years for me.
Maybe it’s because I like tinkering with VMs and SBCs, and most people will not encounter situations where they don’t have nano, but it can happen. And you’ll be glad to know at least “i” and “:wq!”.
In a professional context, you might end up on servers that don’t have nano installed, but do have vi. Or if you’re helping out a friend on their laptop, they might not have the same software as you. Or if you often end up tinkering with random devices and/or setting up new systems it might be tedious to install the same applications every time.
It’s basically an argument for learning the very basics of the most common editors so you have flexibility no matter where you end up. Even when you have the ability to download and install your preferred software, it’s still an extra step that might not be desirable for a variety of reasons. But if it’s just your own personal device, I see no problem with just installing whatever you prefer and running with it.
EDIT: Personally, I find that I don’t end up using those other editors often enough to remember the abstruse commands of tools like vim, so I’m not worried about it. When it does happen, 99% of the time I can just whip out a smartphone and look up the directions for the n-dozenth time.
I’ve come to the conclusion, people who use vim just continue to do so out of a stubborn sense of pride for finally learning the key combinations.
In my case it’s not a sense of pride. I can’t use anything other than Vim because I keep accidentally putting random incantations into my word documents.
“There once was a dduuuZQ:q!”
haha, same. do you use vimium as well?
That extension is actually pretty cool. There is also tridactyl and a browser that was made with vim in mind, but a browser and a text editor are too different for many things to translate.
thanks for sharing, I’ll try it on my work machine
Ya know, I might throw that on to my browser but I doubt I’d actually use it much. I only really use my browser for research; notes, music, and most of my work is done in the terminal. Being able to swap tabs faster by not having to cycle could be useful, but other than that I find the mouse to be a pretty rapid way of navigating unfamiliar pages
in my case, my hand hurts if I use mouse(or a mobile phone) for some time. using
j/kfor scrolling and clicking links viafhelp me a lot.
I honestly learned it just because I hated having to change hand position to use a mouse.
Can you use a mouse in nano? I always just use the arrow keys, or page up/down and home/end
I mostly use vim but I barely use the jkl; to navigate the document.
Ah sorry, I meant using Vim in a GUI program. I wanted something with the flexibility of a mouse (quick navigation, context menu actions, etc.) without using a mouse. Using just the arrow keys, shift highlighting, etc. is just too slow when writing lots of text, and it doesn’t follow the natural position of typing.
Even if you use arrows, you still have to reposition your hand.
nano -m <file>orset mousein your nanorc
I mean, yeah, kind of. In the same way pilots fly planes out of a stubborn sense of pride for knowing what all the flight deck controls do.
I am faster, more comfortable, and more productive in Vim. I use the same keybindings in all my editors and IDEs. It’s okay for people to have different preferences.
It’s just convenient that it’s pre-installed on many servers.
So I can use it now everywhere with my stubborn sense of pride for finally learning the key combinations.What do you mean? The vim users know their key combinations pretty well, that’s kind of the point of vim.
That’s funny, I feel the same way about Excel users.
Somehow it seems this would apply to any linux user
It’s not pride, it’s just that I know how to use it really well and that makes it easy for me to use.
But it’s really only for viewing files on another system over SSH. For local work I use Sublime Text
I just use vi
Is that stupid? It’s all I ever bothered to learn, hasn’t failed me yet. Now I’m not some big time linux guru but I’m a sysadmin and regularly find myself elbow deep in a CLI for stuff.
no, modal text editors are just nicer to use
There is no sense of pride. Every text/code editor has key combinations that many users will learn eventually. Vim has easier key bindings.
When you only need to hammer a nail every once in a while, any hammer will do. When you’re a roofer, you better have a roofing hammer.
If you don’t spend your life in a terminal and just need to edit a file, vim isn’t for you. If you want to learn complex strings of arcane wizardry to not only make your life easier but amaze your underlings, use vim.
Vim (or emacs, or any other advanced text editor) is much easier to use than nano when you need to do something more complex than type couple of lines.
(…once you learn the bindings)
And how often does that happen in the real world?
VIM may have been a very useful tool 20 or 30 years ago, but today it’s nothing else but a tool for one’s sense of superiority. It’s the vinyl of editors.
If you have to type that much code in a terminal, your infrastructure is outdated. Simple as that.
Every day in my case, except holidays.
…so your infrastructure is outdated.
Why do you think so?
Yes it’s so outdated that mostly every IDE offers usage with its keybindings.
VIM may have been a very useful tool 20 or 30 years ago, but today it’s nothing else but a tool for one’s sense of superiority. It’s the vinyl of editors.
So, because you don’t understand something, it’s outdated?
If you have to type that much code in a terminal, your infrastructure is outdated. Simple as that.
Ok, I can see you have no idea what you’re talking about.
I understand it very well. And that’s exactly why I’m writing this.
Ok, I can see you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Then say, grandmaster delusion, what purpose does vim serve, where it is actually the best tool? Writing code? Hardly, it’s way too limited and requires a ton of upfront investment and headspace. Writing config files? Hardly, because if you write these by hand, you’re living in the 90s, that’s what Ansible, Terraform etc are for.
You just don’t want to admit, that vim is nothing more than a habit. Muscle memory.
I actually use VIM bindings in PyCharm, slightly cursed but actually works really well and meshes fairly nicely with the other IDE shortcuts. Being able to use it in any terminal is a nice bonus.
You noobs. I just use combinations of cat piped to sed to edit my files, which are mainly lisp code.
cat pipeing is safer though.
foobar > file and your file is gone.
You can always alias
to<in your shell.Get out!
`<file foobar|
Huh does that actually work? Don’t have a system handy to try it out.
storage/documents/programs ro > echo puts "hello world" > main.rb storage/documents/programs ro via rb > ls c js main.rb python storage/documents/programs ro via rb > < main.rb grep hello puts hello world storage/documents/programs ro via rb >I think so! I think it’s something like
< fileworks anywhere in the line, not just the end. There may be some specifics about no space when it is the front but I don’t remember lol.
Amateur! I write my code down on a piece of paper, scan it in, send it to my computer through email, then make a custom-built AI read the paper and print it in the terminal!
M-x M-c butterfly
Link.
I’ll say that I find easier to exit vim that to exit nano.
I don’t know what ^ means. I just start pressing special keys until it doesn’t the thing
CTRL
In every post of this kind I am amazed at so many people using
nanoinstead ofmicrowhich is SO MUCH BETTER while being the same thing at the same time.When you help manage thousands of servers with vim and nano already installed, it’s just faster to use one of those than installing something else nearly ever single time.
I prefer nano for quick edits of small files, but vim for hunting down things in larger files.
Or you can preinstall
microlike you preinstall everything else 😅I’m not that high on the totem pole unfortunately
Holy cow. You can use your mouse with micro. Amazing.
You can have mouse support with nano. Alt-m toggles it on or off.
Oh wow. Weird that it defaults to off.
You can change that in the
nanorcalong with changing key binds, colors, and the like.
And all the shortcuts are SANE, not the weird thing of
nano
I’ve discovered it just a few days ago and now use it on all my machines
I started on Unix systems using Vim, so I find Nano to be the confusing editor. A Vim install is one of the first things I do on a new server.
The best text editor is ‘$EDITOR’.
I think you mean “$EDITOR”. Gotta have that variable expansion.
Not necessarily! I always run
ln -s '/usr/bin/$EDITOR' $(which $EDITOR)after a fresh install, so I have a valid executable on the path called$EDITOR.Of course, then I have to make sure to add
export EDITOR=\$EDITORto my.bashrc. (Obviously.)Well,.that’s one way to solve the problem of not expanding your editor var correctly…
