this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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me like use nano. nano say how do thing. nano exit easy.

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[–] MehBlah@lemmy.world 130 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The image is misleading. The brain sizes represent the amount of grey matter it takes to operate the editor. The nano guy has plenty of brain power left over for things like hygiene, breathing and basic reasoning.

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago

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

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[–] MoffKalast@lemmy.world 102 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Vim users: "I feel bad for you"

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

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 47 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] quips@slrpnk.net 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

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[–] ruuster13@lemmy.zip 42 points 1 month ago (4 children)

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

[–] faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 29 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I'm team nano, I'm not smart enough to use the other two and for whenever I need to open a text file in terminal only environment once every year I can remember how to navigate nano. So I'll keep using nano.

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[–] marcos@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes. It's newby-friendly, what is great for the time every 2 or 3 years that it opens in my face and there's no alternative editor installed.

Copy and paste are there too, but there's no reason to use them instead of the terminal buffer, so I can edit things in an editor I like. I just wish it made it easier to delete several lines at the same time.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)
[–] dogdeanafternoon@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago

That’s racist

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[–] hedders@fedia.io 38 points 1 month ago (6 children)

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

[–] pelya@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago (7 children)

I remember the time when Linux jokes were about audio drivers and X11 config files, but audio has long been working out of the box, and X11 is already dead and cremated.

Even recompiling kernel now takes around five minutes instead of two hours, so that joke is irrelevant too.

So all we are left with is timeless discussion of which text editor is the best, and dumping on Windows.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 21 points 1 month ago (8 children)

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

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[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 5 points 1 month ago

when nerds fight, it's the text editors that suffer

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[–] rosco385@lemmy.wtf 37 points 1 month ago (2 children)
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[–] smh@slrpnk.net 30 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I love nano. I used to do tech support for a Linux-based content management system (before SAaS take took off).. The customer sysadmins were sometimes whichever engineer was volun-told to do it, so competency varied wildly.

I helped mostly with installs. This might be the poor newbie sysadmin's first time on the command line. Nano was my go-to suggestion for editing config files--all the commands are right there! Much less intimidating than vi or emacs for a newbie.

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

[–] cepelinas@sopuli.xyz 26 points 1 month ago (2 children)

nano is just a text editor, I use it as a text editor, it has keybindings on screen by default, no need to config or memorise, why bother? (for text editing, not whatever people use vim or emacs for)

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[–] Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Fortunately, every computer comes equipped with an "exit editor" button. It's on the back, attached to the power supply unit. You just flick the switch. Exits every editor known to humanity. /j

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[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago (8 children)

I use micro. It's 1000x better.

[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Today I learned about the existence of "milli" and "kilo", both of which are terminal-based text editors! Quite interesting. I wonder if there are any more SI unit prefix text editors...

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[–] kalpol@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Pico...I'm going the wrong direction

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[–] fartsparkles@lemmy.world 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (11 children)

micro enters the chat.

Static, portable binary with no dependencies.

Out of the box:

  • Syntax highlighting
  • Multi-line cursors like Sublime Text
  • Mouse support (works incredibly well)
  • Splits and tabs for working on multiple files
  • Diff gutter
  • Copy and paste with system clipboard
  • Cross-platform (runs basically on anything that Go does)
  • Sane key binds (ctrl-s, ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-z, ctrl-x, etc)
  • Terminal emulator
  • Plugin system to extend it
  • And much much more

I have nothing to do with the project but this binary is the absolute best. curl or wget to any host and away you go with effectively a Sublime Text / VSCode like in the terminal. It’s as simple as nano and as functional as a well configured and extended vim.

It’s baffling it’s not more well known and not installed by default on major distros.

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

That’s not a text editor, that’s an IDE.

[–] fartsparkles@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And emacs is an operating system 😂

[–] ramasses@social.ozymandias.club 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

IMO it needs better LSP support and things like refactoring, smart auto completion, and go to definition to be considered an ide.

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[–] Francislewwis@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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

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[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I used some distro with vim back in the day and I just kept using it. I lose my shit when I use something with just nano and my muscle memory tries to do a vim thing.

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[–] Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Some real talk.

Can we just include the 4 most popular text editors on basic systems??

Like i wanna scream when there isnt my text editor installed on a lightweight distro.

Vi Emacs Micro Nano

For context,

Debian ships with nano and vi Openwrt only ships with nano

Like cant we just include small editors. In a perfect world i would want neovim installed. But i understand its larger and has alot more dependency's.

So having VI isnt as good but im willing to be reasonable.

JUST INCLUDE VI

the reason i learned vim is because VI is installed by default on almost every distro.

Im tempted to try emacs tho

[–] daychilde@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

It's important to learn how to use package managers. :)

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[–] AlbatrossFanboy@programming.dev 10 points 1 month ago

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

[–] callyral@pawb.social 10 points 1 month ago (4 children)
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[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Just use ed.

Ctrl+D. Easy.

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

bash: ed: command not found

WHERE GOD NOW?

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

What sins have you committed on your system to remove ed?

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (4 children)

fastfetch | grep ackage
Packages: 2530 (dpkg), 21 (flatpak)

me no remove package. me start with vanilla debian install. no need gui until me choose to install gui.

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[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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

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

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[–] jeffep@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 6 points 1 month ago (6 children)
[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Having exposed brain probably lead to significant damages to it.

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[–] rozodru@piefed.world 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Nano or as I like to call it "The Sudo Editor"

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[–] m33@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Meanwhile in an alternate universe, two people argue about edit vs edlin… 😆

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[–] bilb@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 month ago

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

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