this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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Changing from a distro that defaults to nano to another that defaults to vim... What to do other than installing nano and changing visudo?

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[–] dparticiple@sh.itjust.works 31 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (3 children)

At the risk of restarting the Editor wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war) from days of yore, I find it interesting that emacs wasn't even in your list of contenders. I hear it mentioned less frequently these days, so perhaps it's going by the wayside?

For the record, I'm a vi/vim user! I had the privilege of being taught to use it by an RFC-writing greybeard decades ago, and have used it without thinking ever since.

For those who find themselves on a machine with only vi/vim, or want to learn, here's a quick primer when editing a file (usually done by typing "vi foo.txt" in a shell) --

:q! ...Force quit vi (:q also works -- gentler!)

:wq! ...Save file and quit vi

i (then type characters) ...insert text at current position

A (then type characters) ...Insert at end of current line

G ...go to first character of last line in the file

/foo ...search for first occurrence of "foo" in the file (hit / again to find additional instances)

x ...Delete character under cursor

:56 ...Go to line 56

yy ...Copy the line the cursor is currently on into the buffer

p ... Paste the buffer

r (then type character) ...Replace character under cursor

u ...undo (hit multiple times to undo prior actions)

When done with a command like this, hit Esc to go back into normal mode.

Second nature after a bit of practice! I used to work with a guy who insisted on using ed. That was... odd.

[–] kaiyo@piefed.ca 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah but op was comparing editors, not OS's. https://emacsos.dev/

[–] solomonschuler@lemmy.zip 1 points 14 hours ago

well it is an editor, it was intended to be an editor, you just have the options to watch videos within it 😂

[–] SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Not jn my case but part of emacs downward trending mind share could be due to rms himself

[–] RichardNixos@lemmy.ml 1 points 14 hours ago

Is RMS still actively involved in Emacs?