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Legacy, more than anything else. Nano has been a thing for decades, and it will likely be a thing for decades more. Are there better, more powerful editors out
by thomascgalvin 8y ago
Legacy, more than anything else. Nano has been a thing for decades, and it will likely be a thing for decades more.
Are there better, more powerful editors out there? Sure. But just like vim, you can expect to find nano pretty much anywhere, and if you need to make a quick change, say to a configuration file on a bare-bones system, that's nice.
- _delirium 8y agoOf those two (nano/vim), I've also found it easier to introduce people to nano. I personally use vim, but if I'm doing a tutorial for people who aren't very familiar with the unix terminal, and at some point in the tutorial they need to edit a config file, I'd rather not take a big digression into explaining vi's modal-editing concept just to change one line in a config file.
- em500 8y agoYou're assuming Linux. BSD distributions don't install nano by default. vi is a mandatory POSIX utility, nano is not.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- _delirium 8y agoThis doesn't help the problem of knowing what to type on any system up-front, but fwiw, FreeBSD ships with a nano-like editor in the base install, ee(1).
- em500 8y agoAnd what about any of the other BSD? Or Solaris? Might as well bite the bullet and learn some basic POSIX vi (or ed).