15 ms·

Nano 5.7

136 points by lelf 5y ago

villgax 5y ago
Reminds me how how Basecamp would have acted during WW2 as well. Nothing to do with business so take it outside.
azabua 5y ago
For those who use an actual editor https://www.vimconf.live/ https://www.vimconf.live/ Heh can one imagine a conference for NANO?
- bdcravens 5y ago
  No, I honestly can't imagine why you'd need a conference for a tool. Maybe I'm missing something and the construction industry is similarly excited about DrillConf or TruckConf.
  - _joel 5y ago
    I get your point but there are all sorts of conferences and conventions. Obscure subject conferences are not just for tech :) https://www.worktruckshow.com/ https://www.worktruckshow.com/ and there's even one for concrete https://concreteshow.co.uk/ https://concreteshow.co.uk/
  - cjohnson318 5y ago
    I'm in oil and gas and I can say I'm pretty excited about DrillConf.
BooneJS 5y ago
Nano was my gateway editor when learning *nix in college. I tried vi only to have to close the window to exit. I think nano can continue to safely bring in converts from Windows and MacOS.
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  I LOVE Nano. I just can’t figure out vi/vim.
  - nindalf 5y ago
    I think vim has a pretty good tutorial within it. If you ever give it another chance, try that tutorial.
    - tpoacher 5y ago
      Nano also has a pretty good tutorial within it. It's called "look at the bottom of the window".
  - mobilio 5y ago
    Me too! Everything i know about vi/vim is :q and :q!
  - hknapp 5y ago
    https://danielmiessler.com/study/vim/ https://danielmiessler.com/study/vim/ it will probably take 4+ days to become faster editing text with vim than nano, and then you likely won't look back. Come back to the guide with decreasing frequency to add more knowledge to your vim arsenal.
valera_rozuvan 5y ago
I don't understand the people who dislike nano as an editor for the *nix system. After spending in it for like 30 minutes - it becomes an indispensable tool for quickly touching up text files anywhere you go to! No matter where I SSH to (*nix systems) - I always had nano available.
- simion314 5y ago
  Probably the elitist guys, the ones that have their identity defined by the editor they use, the language and framework and the Linux distro/DE/OS they use. Many people just need a tool that does a simple job but does it well, like editing a ini file and adding a line or a word, nano is great for that. (we all know that type of guy that has to tell everyone all the time that he uses Arch and Rust would have fixed everything)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - cesarb 5y ago
    > like editing a ini file and adding a line or a word, That's precisely the use case that has made me remove nano from every machine I administer since the 90s. Unless you're really careful to always start nano as "nano -w", its hard word wrapping will introduce line breaks where many configuration file formats (including ini files) don't expect, and it will do so in lines other than the one you're modifying. It's less risky to simply set another editor as the default. (But if you're careful to always use "nano -w", it's a perfectly fine editor.)
    - awild 5y ago
      you could've also just set-up an /etc/nanorc file with the appropriate flag set. Also I've literally never encountered this behaviour even when copy-pasting code between two machines in my humble 10 years of using nano.
    - kijin 5y ago
      I've never seen nano on any popular Linux distro hard-wrap long lines by default. Yes, it's controlled by a setting, and some people turn it on for some reason, but I just confirmed it's off by default (no need for any command-line flag) in both CentOS and Ubuntu. You might have been burned by a setting left behind by someone with a weird taste.
293984j29384 5y ago
I never understood the hate Nano gets from vi users. Nano does many things quicker and easier than vi. For example, search & replace. Would I code in Nano? No. Do I use Nano to edit configuration files and make other small edits? Absolutely.
- minikites 5y ago
  >I never understood the hate Nano gets from vi users. They need to justify all the time they spent learning and configuring vi/vim to themselves and to others.
  - baseballdork 5y ago
    That's pretty dismissive. I used nano early on and moved to vim and loved it. I think other people might have a similar experience as me so I encourage them to try vim or emacs if they're up for it. I'm not trying to justify my time in vim, I'm trying to encourage people to see if they might appreciate the tool as much as I do.
    - minikites 5y ago
      It doesn't sound like you hate nano though, so my comment doesn't apply to you or people like you.
  - mettamage 5y ago
    Not really, I don't configure vim and all my skills w.r.t. vim are via vimtutor. Cost of learning: 1 hour (when I was bored on a long train ride and didn't have access to internet). I did the tutorial 3 times. The basics of vim are easy to learn. Caveat: I do remember I had like 5 false starts in learning vim (and remembering nothing). This was before I knew vimtutor and googled for random tutorials. IMO, a lot of vim tutorials make out the vim basics to be much more complicated than they are. Vimtutor doesn't, vimtutor is the perfect example of a magic bullet. Just type vimtutor in the CLI and go.
  - apocolyps6 5y ago
    > All those C programmers hating on python are probably just bitter they had to waste all that time learning pointers.
staticassertion 5y ago
Learning from this HN thread that apparently Nano gets hate. I've been programming for years, nano is still my go-to for "I'm in the terminal and I need to make a small modification". I use it daily.
- crocarneiro 5y ago
  Same here. I think it's better for small modifications. I find CTRL+o CTRL+x faster than ESC + :x, also there is no need to enter an edit mode. But at the end of the day is a matter of taste.
- nucleardog 5y ago
  That's what it's perfect for. If you asked me, given no prior knowledge of any editor, whether I'd want to be dropped in nano or vim to make some random modifications somewhere it would be nano hands down. It's significantly easier to use and significantly more discoverable with the menu. On the other hand vim is borderline a programming language for text. It's kind of a slog at first. It's climbing a cliff to learn the basics, and that that point it's barely more productive than any other editor. Or maybe still less productive because a lot of simple operations are things you end up still having to go to Google for and spend some time reading through documentation. But there's some point where you kind of get up that cliff and over the top of the mountain and it all sort of comes together on the downslope. Things start to become a bit more intuitive and become _easy_. You start to see the ways that a bunch of the little atomic bits you've learned can be chained together to create complex operations. At that's the point where vim really shines. Once you hit that point it's kinda tough going back to anything else because it feels like working with one hand tied behind your back. And that's all available... everywhere. Gui, terminal, local, remote, there's really no setup required beyond a `apt-get install vim` or `pkg install vim-console`. But yeah, no hate on nano any more than I'd hate screwdrivers because drills exist. They're totally different tools.
minimaul 5y ago
nano is great as a quick command line config editor. I wouldn't use it for a big task, but it's wonderful to just dive into, make a quick change, and get on with whatever you were doing. Has syntax highlighting support too, so you can have your config file nicely highlighted to make editing easier :) There's nothing wrong with vi/vim or emacs either, but nano has got to be the most accessible command line editor out there.
qalmakka 5y ago
Nano, it's been so long since the last time I have used it. I have so many fond memories of opening it to edit configuration fileson bare TTYs while installing Gentoo or Archlinux in the mid '00s. A few years later I switched to (N)Vi(m) (with quite a long Emacs parenthesis), but `nano` still has a special place in my heart as my first real experience with a CLI editor (if you exclude MSDOS' EDIT, of course).
fouric 5y ago
As a vim and emacs user, I don't give nano any hate. I'm surprised when programmers use it, sure, but that's because if my profession was going to require editing text files for hours a day (which it does), I would be happy to trade a steeper learning curve now for a less unpleasant job experience later. I totally understand why non-programmers don't use it. If your job does not involve you editing text files for hours a day, then nano (or a graphical editor - gedit, kedit, notepad?) is inarguably a better choice for you than emacs or vim - the effort involved will probably never pay off. ed users: you have my respect, which I will dispense from a distance.
- blueblob 5y ago
  Yeah, how could you hate on anyone who uses the standard text editor?[0] [0] https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html
  - bear8642 5y ago
    you joke, but ed is great if have tiny change to make given compiler output simply just to how fast it loads
    - kstrauser 5y ago
      I got a local login on a machine so busted that I couldn't mount /usr, meaning I couldn't read /usr/share/terminfo, meaning no screen editors would work. I knew just enough ed that I was able to fix /etc/fstab and bring the system up. I wouldn't wanna use it every day, but it has its time and place.
      - donio 5y ago
        "busybox vi" is another option in these situations when that's available. It will happily run in a blank chroot. Everybody should know a little ed though, it's not that hard.
        5y ago
apocolyps6 5y ago
1 critical comment about nano, 3 top level comments defending nano from the evil vim users. (at time of reading)
- bidirectional 5y ago
  As is the way with these things. No one feels insecure about vim, not sure the same can be said of nano.
- dqx 5y ago
  0 discussion of any new features in Nano-5.7 (the topic of the post)
totetsu 5y ago
Nano has the best anime avatar https://youtu.be/k5HYzIw60iI https://youtu.be/k5HYzIw60iI
- tomcam 5y ago
  That is one of my favorite shows ever
k__ 5y ago
I'm so glad that Nano and Pico exist. These are the only terminal editors I really understand.
an_mp_speaks 5y ago
A delightfully opaque version name, as ever. Does anyone know what it's referencing?
- fullstop 5y ago
  It's a clone / inspired by the editor in Pine, pico, the PIne COmposer. Ages ago, Pine was fairly standard for text-based email on Unix. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_(email_client) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_(email_client) The name is a play on metric prefixes.
  - GrayShade 5y ago
    I think the grand-parent was asking about the code name of this version, "Toți ceilalți arau câmpurile", and not the program name.
- GrayShade 5y ago
  It's a quote from Harari's Sapiens book: "[History is something that very few people have been doing while] everyone else has been ploughing fields [and carrying water buckets]". For some reason, it's in Romanian. It may sound full of hubris, but I don't think that's the intention. Check out https://www.nano-editor.org/news.php https://www.nano-editor.org/news.php for previous release names. The maintainer has gone through a wide variety of references.
GiorgioG 5y ago
I learned Pico in college (part of our email system IIRC.) I don't code in terminal windows (prefer IDEs) and I can get by in vim. Inevitably I reach for nano when I'm editing config files.
earthboundkid 5y ago
CMD-F "micro" returned nothing, so here is a link to a modern nano replacement: https://micro-editor.github.io https://micro-editor.github.io
- stinkytaco 5y ago
  I'm curious what the intended audience for micro is? It seems like if you want extensibility you use vi or emacs. If you want a very quick and dirty program where you use the same 4 or 5 commands every time you open it, you use nano since it's already installed. I don't know a lot of people in the middle, personally, so I'm curious what people who are using micro like about it in particular.
  - account4mypc 5y ago
    micro has two really nice features - mouse select - same keyboard shortcuts as vscode other than that it's the same as nano
  - pierrec 5y ago
    I used it when my laptop died and I decided to do continue working on my project using termux on my (low end) smartphone. It played well with the touchscreen and made a nice temporary environment. Basic and almost zero learning curve, but extensible and customizable when I wanted it.
  - jftuga 5y ago
    Windows sys admin here. Micro is nice because it is a single-file, stand-alone executable that has mouse support, macro record/playback and syntax highlighting. (I haven't checked Nano recently). Because of this, I don't mind installing it on servers. It is great for making quick edits to json configs, batch files, powershell, python scripts, etc. Syntax highlighting and line numbering are key. The alternative is editing the file locally and then getting it onto the server which can be challenging for locked down systems, especially Windows Server Core which does not have a GUI environment. Even on my local machine, if I need to make a really quick edit, it is much faster to use this than waiting for VS Code or PyCharm to load. You also stay focused. By this I mean, your eyes don't leave the powershell window that you are currently working in. This allows me to more quickly complete the task at hand.
canada2us 5y ago
Don't give hate a chance, guys. Just ask people to use `editor` to edit text files, it will open the default editor on their OS (at least Debian). Our goal is to ask others to edit some text files, not to ask them to use what tool to edit those files. Cheers.
- CivBase 5y ago
  Ed is the standard text editor.
haolez 5y ago
Even nano can become a powerful programming editor if combined with fzf[0]. You can quickly navigate to files, tags and language server stuff and then open your files directly into the line of interest. It's a nice exercise for someone willing to get a feel of the Unix way (I'm not advocating it as your daily driver, though). [0] https://github.com/junegunn/fzf https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
vharuck 5y ago
I use nano when writing short Python or bash scripts in Termux for my Android phone. Is there a different editor I should try? Note that this isn't a common activity, so I'm likely to forget key bindings. I like how nano always displays those at the bottom.
- siver_john 5y ago
  Nah, nano is probably fine for what you are doing. It excels at quick short edits.
bulibuta 5y ago
I love the release motto in Romanian and what it references! On topic (sic!): Hardcore vim-user, loving and recommending nano to every new Unix user. Guess I'm schizophrenic according to current HN comments.
hidden_sheepman 5y ago
Nano, is great, very light weight, and easy to compile from source. Usually available on pretty much any unix system. I love the fact that it doesn't try to do anything more than edit text.
ShakataGaNai 5y ago
Thank you Nano devs. I love it and continue to love it all these years later. I'm happy to get in the middle of any vi vs emacs fight with the battle cry of "Nano for life!". The looks on their face is always priceless.
- tpoacher 5y ago
  +1. Especially when they realise you're being serious. \o/
mixmastamyk 5y ago
Nano was a good alternative on Unix-likes in the old days for config files and such, since very few alternatives existed. However, CUA keybindings were a sore point. It could be almost configured to use them, but dragging config files around to every box was a chore. About tenish years ago, I found "ne" and it was a bit better, but not a slam dunk. A few years ago, I found "micro". It is what I always wanted, the simplicity of a CUA editor on Unix that I've used from DOS edit, to Notepad(++), to current GUI editors and IDEs, etc. I'd like a menu widget also, but that's a nitpick really. Anyway, since it is packaged in Debian/Ubuntu now I've little use for nano. I no longer tolerate programs with unique keybindings, sane standards are a must.
dang 5y ago
Some past threads - hard to pick out from other nanos - An Atonement of Nano - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063301 - Feb 2021 (100 comments) Nano 5.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995909 - July 2020 (195 comments) Fedora Approves of Making Nano the Default Terminal Text Editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23818199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23818199 - July 2020 (95 comments) Fedora Devs Looking to Change Default Editor from Vi to Nano - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21566828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21566828 - Nov 2019 (34 comments) GNU Nano 4.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19476526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19476526 - March 2019 (147 comments) GNU nano 3.0 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17946145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17946145 - Sept 2018 (43 comments) GNU nano 2.9.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15731079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15731079 - Nov 2017 (59 comments) Nano to remain in GNU - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420683 - Sept 2016 (65 comments) What’s up with nano? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958728 - June 2016 (79 comments) Nano is no longer a GNU project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11953044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11953044 - June 2016 (229 comments)
nige123 5y ago
Love nano. Many of the keybindings work in bash too. Check out: https://www.nano-editor.org/dist/latest/cheatsheet.html https://www.nano-editor.org/dist/latest/cheatsheet.html
- ashton314 5y ago
  All those key bindings came from Emacs originally
cicero 5y ago
I've always thought of nano as simplistic, but reading the discussion here, I see there is more to it than I thought. I learned vi (precursor of vim) in the 1980s and the commands became second nature to me. However, as window-based systems and applications became the norm, I found it difficult to switch between vim and Windows or Mac applications, including the web. A good example of my problem involves the use of the escape key in vim to switch out of text entry mode, but many other apps use escape to cancel an action. I got tired of typing a paragraph, hitting escape, and then having to retype the paragraph because I had cancelled my input. Nevertheless, it's great to have an editor I can easily invoke from the Linux command-line, so I still use vim for that. However, I will consider moving to nano for that purpose. At my age, I may never know it as well as the vi/vim I learned in my younger days, but it should still be useful.
- tommica 5y ago
  Have you considered using extensions for editors and browsers that provide ViM like keybindings?
xedrac 5y ago
Unless Nano has changed a lot in the last 10 years, there's just no comparing it with Vim when it comes to productivity. Vim would blow it out of the water 10 times over in just about every use case I can think of, except initial learning curve. For that reason, I agree with Fedora's decision to make Nano the default editor.
amai 5y ago
Is there an alternative programmed in Rust?

136 points by lelf 5y ago

Reminds me how how Basecamp would have acted during WW2 as well. Nothing to do with business so take it outside.

For those who use an actual editor https://www.vimconf.live/ https://www.vimconf.live/ Heh can one imagine a conference for NANO?

bdcravens 5y ago
No, I honestly can't imagine why you'd need a conference for a tool. Maybe I'm missing something and the construction industry is similarly excited about DrillConf or TruckConf.
- _joel 5y ago
  I get your point but there are all sorts of conferences and conventions. Obscure subject conferences are not just for tech :) https://www.worktruckshow.com/ https://www.worktruckshow.com/ and there's even one for concrete https://concreteshow.co.uk/ https://concreteshow.co.uk/
- cjohnson318 5y ago
  I'm in oil and gas and I can say I'm pretty excited about DrillConf.

BooneJS 5y ago

Nano was my gateway editor when learning *nix in college. I tried vi only to have to close the window to exit. I think nano can continue to safely bring in converts from Windows and MacOS.

philliphaydon 5y ago
I LOVE Nano. I just can’t figure out vi/vim.
- nindalf 5y ago
  I think vim has a pretty good tutorial within it. If you ever give it another chance, try that tutorial.
  - tpoacher 5y ago
    Nano also has a pretty good tutorial within it. It's called "look at the bottom of the window".
- mobilio 5y ago
  Me too! Everything i know about vi/vim is :q and :q!
- hknapp 5y ago
  https://danielmiessler.com/study/vim/ https://danielmiessler.com/study/vim/ it will probably take 4+ days to become faster editing text with vim than nano, and then you likely won't look back. Come back to the guide with decreasing frequency to add more knowledge to your vim arsenal.

valera_rozuvan 5y ago

I don't understand the people who dislike nano as an editor for the *nix system. After spending in it for like 30 minutes - it becomes an indispensable tool for quickly touching up text files anywhere you go to! No matter where I SSH to (*nix systems) - I always had nano available.

simion314 5y ago
Probably the elitist guys, the ones that have their identity defined by the editor they use, the language and framework and the Linux distro/DE/OS they use. Many people just need a tool that does a simple job but does it well, like editing a ini file and adding a line or a word, nano is great for that. (we all know that type of guy that has to tell everyone all the time that he uses Arch and Rust would have fixed everything)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- cesarb 5y ago
  > like editing a ini file and adding a line or a word, That's precisely the use case that has made me remove nano from every machine I administer since the 90s. Unless you're really careful to always start nano as "nano -w", its hard word wrapping will introduce line breaks where many configuration file formats (including ini files) don't expect, and it will do so in lines other than the one you're modifying. It's less risky to simply set another editor as the default. (But if you're careful to always use "nano -w", it's a perfectly fine editor.)
  - awild 5y ago
    you could've also just set-up an /etc/nanorc file with the appropriate flag set. Also I've literally never encountered this behaviour even when copy-pasting code between two machines in my humble 10 years of using nano.
  - kijin 5y ago
    I've never seen nano on any popular Linux distro hard-wrap long lines by default. Yes, it's controlled by a setting, and some people turn it on for some reason, but I just confirmed it's off by default (no need for any command-line flag) in both CentOS and Ubuntu. You might have been burned by a setting left behind by someone with a weird taste.

293984j29384 5y ago

I never understood the hate Nano gets from vi users. Nano does many things quicker and easier than vi. For example, search & replace. Would I code in Nano? No. Do I use Nano to edit configuration files and make other small edits? Absolutely.

minikites 5y ago
>I never understood the hate Nano gets from vi users. They need to justify all the time they spent learning and configuring vi/vim to themselves and to others.
- baseballdork 5y ago
  That's pretty dismissive. I used nano early on and moved to vim and loved it. I think other people might have a similar experience as me so I encourage them to try vim or emacs if they're up for it. I'm not trying to justify my time in vim, I'm trying to encourage people to see if they might appreciate the tool as much as I do.
  - minikites 5y ago
    It doesn't sound like you hate nano though, so my comment doesn't apply to you or people like you.
- mettamage 5y ago
  Not really, I don't configure vim and all my skills w.r.t. vim are via vimtutor. Cost of learning: 1 hour (when I was bored on a long train ride and didn't have access to internet). I did the tutorial 3 times. The basics of vim are easy to learn. Caveat: I do remember I had like 5 false starts in learning vim (and remembering nothing). This was before I knew vimtutor and googled for random tutorials. IMO, a lot of vim tutorials make out the vim basics to be much more complicated than they are. Vimtutor doesn't, vimtutor is the perfect example of a magic bullet. Just type vimtutor in the CLI and go.
- apocolyps6 5y ago
  > All those C programmers hating on python are probably just bitter they had to waste all that time learning pointers.

staticassertion 5y ago

Learning from this HN thread that apparently Nano gets hate. I've been programming for years, nano is still my go-to for "I'm in the terminal and I need to make a small modification". I use it daily.

crocarneiro 5y ago
Same here. I think it's better for small modifications. I find CTRL+o CTRL+x faster than ESC + :x, also there is no need to enter an edit mode. But at the end of the day is a matter of taste.
nucleardog 5y ago
That's what it's perfect for. If you asked me, given no prior knowledge of any editor, whether I'd want to be dropped in nano or vim to make some random modifications somewhere it would be nano hands down. It's significantly easier to use and significantly more discoverable with the menu. On the other hand vim is borderline a programming language for text. It's kind of a slog at first. It's climbing a cliff to learn the basics, and that that point it's barely more productive than any other editor. Or maybe still less productive because a lot of simple operations are things you end up still having to go to Google for and spend some time reading through documentation. But there's some point where you kind of get up that cliff and over the top of the mountain and it all sort of comes together on the downslope. Things start to become a bit more intuitive and become _easy_. You start to see the ways that a bunch of the little atomic bits you've learned can be chained together to create complex operations. At that's the point where vim really shines. Once you hit that point it's kinda tough going back to anything else because it feels like working with one hand tied behind your back. And that's all available... everywhere. Gui, terminal, local, remote, there's really no setup required beyond a `apt-get install vim` or `pkg install vim-console`. But yeah, no hate on nano any more than I'd hate screwdrivers because drills exist. They're totally different tools.

minimaul 5y ago

nano is great as a quick command line config editor. I wouldn't use it for a big task, but it's wonderful to just dive into, make a quick change, and get on with whatever you were doing. Has syntax highlighting support too, so you can have your config file nicely highlighted to make editing easier :) There's nothing wrong with vi/vim or emacs either, but nano has got to be the most accessible command line editor out there.

qalmakka 5y ago

Nano, it's been so long since the last time I have used it. I have so many fond memories of opening it to edit configuration fileson bare TTYs while installing Gentoo or Archlinux in the mid '00s. A few years later I switched to (N)Vi(m) (with quite a long Emacs parenthesis), but `nano` still has a special place in my heart as my first real experience with a CLI editor (if you exclude MSDOS' EDIT, of course).

fouric 5y ago

As a vim and emacs user, I don't give nano any hate. I'm surprised when programmers use it, sure, but that's because if my profession was going to require editing text files for hours a day (which it does), I would be happy to trade a steeper learning curve now for a less unpleasant job experience later. I totally understand why non-programmers don't use it. If your job does not involve you editing text files for hours a day, then nano (or a graphical editor - gedit, kedit, notepad?) is inarguably a better choice for you than emacs or vim - the effort involved will probably never pay off. ed users: you have my respect, which I will dispense from a distance.

blueblob 5y ago
Yeah, how could you hate on anyone who uses the standard text editor?[0] [0] https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html
- bear8642 5y ago
  you joke, but ed is great if have tiny change to make given compiler output simply just to how fast it loads
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    I got a local login on a machine so busted that I couldn't mount /usr, meaning I couldn't read /usr/share/terminfo, meaning no screen editors would work. I knew just enough ed that I was able to fix /etc/fstab and bring the system up. I wouldn't wanna use it every day, but it has its time and place.
    - donio 5y ago
      "busybox vi" is another option in these situations when that's available. It will happily run in a blank chroot. Everybody should know a little ed though, it's not that hard.
      - 5y ago

apocolyps6 5y ago

1 critical comment about nano, 3 top level comments defending nano from the evil vim users. (at time of reading)

bidirectional 5y ago
As is the way with these things. No one feels insecure about vim, not sure the same can be said of nano.
dqx 5y ago
0 discussion of any new features in Nano-5.7 (the topic of the post)

totetsu 5y ago

Nano has the best anime avatar https://youtu.be/k5HYzIw60iI https://youtu.be/k5HYzIw60iI

tomcam 5y ago
That is one of my favorite shows ever

k__ 5y ago

I'm so glad that Nano and Pico exist. These are the only terminal editors I really understand.

an_mp_speaks 5y ago

A delightfully opaque version name, as ever. Does anyone know what it's referencing?

fullstop 5y ago
It's a clone / inspired by the editor in Pine, pico, the PIne COmposer. Ages ago, Pine was fairly standard for text-based email on Unix. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_(email_client) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_(email_client) The name is a play on metric prefixes.
- GrayShade 5y ago
  I think the grand-parent was asking about the code name of this version, "Toți ceilalți arau câmpurile", and not the program name.
GrayShade 5y ago
It's a quote from Harari's Sapiens book: "[History is something that very few people have been doing while] everyone else has been ploughing fields [and carrying water buckets]". For some reason, it's in Romanian. It may sound full of hubris, but I don't think that's the intention. Check out https://www.nano-editor.org/news.php https://www.nano-editor.org/news.php for previous release names. The maintainer has gone through a wide variety of references.

GiorgioG 5y ago

I learned Pico in college (part of our email system IIRC.) I don't code in terminal windows (prefer IDEs) and I can get by in vim. Inevitably I reach for nano when I'm editing config files.

earthboundkid 5y ago

CMD-F "micro" returned nothing, so here is a link to a modern nano replacement: https://micro-editor.github.io https://micro-editor.github.io

stinkytaco 5y ago
I'm curious what the intended audience for micro is? It seems like if you want extensibility you use vi or emacs. If you want a very quick and dirty program where you use the same 4 or 5 commands every time you open it, you use nano since it's already installed. I don't know a lot of people in the middle, personally, so I'm curious what people who are using micro like about it in particular.
- account4mypc 5y ago
  micro has two really nice features - mouse select - same keyboard shortcuts as vscode other than that it's the same as nano
- pierrec 5y ago
  I used it when my laptop died and I decided to do continue working on my project using termux on my (low end) smartphone. It played well with the touchscreen and made a nice temporary environment. Basic and almost zero learning curve, but extensible and customizable when I wanted it.
- jftuga 5y ago
  Windows sys admin here. Micro is nice because it is a single-file, stand-alone executable that has mouse support, macro record/playback and syntax highlighting. (I haven't checked Nano recently). Because of this, I don't mind installing it on servers. It is great for making quick edits to json configs, batch files, powershell, python scripts, etc. Syntax highlighting and line numbering are key. The alternative is editing the file locally and then getting it onto the server which can be challenging for locked down systems, especially Windows Server Core which does not have a GUI environment. Even on my local machine, if I need to make a really quick edit, it is much faster to use this than waiting for VS Code or PyCharm to load. You also stay focused. By this I mean, your eyes don't leave the powershell window that you are currently working in. This allows me to more quickly complete the task at hand.

canada2us 5y ago

Don't give hate a chance, guys. Just ask people to use `editor` to edit text files, it will open the default editor on their OS (at least Debian). Our goal is to ask others to edit some text files, not to ask them to use what tool to edit those files. Cheers.

CivBase 5y ago
Ed is the standard text editor.

haolez 5y ago

Even nano can become a powerful programming editor if combined with fzf[0]. You can quickly navigate to files, tags and language server stuff and then open your files directly into the line of interest. It's a nice exercise for someone willing to get a feel of the Unix way (I'm not advocating it as your daily driver, though). [0] https://github.com/junegunn/fzf https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

vharuck 5y ago

I use nano when writing short Python or bash scripts in Termux for my Android phone. Is there a different editor I should try? Note that this isn't a common activity, so I'm likely to forget key bindings. I like how nano always displays those at the bottom.

siver_john 5y ago
Nah, nano is probably fine for what you are doing. It excels at quick short edits.

bulibuta 5y ago

I love the release motto in Romanian and what it references! On topic (sic!): Hardcore vim-user, loving and recommending nano to every new Unix user. Guess I'm schizophrenic according to current HN comments.

hidden_sheepman 5y ago

Nano, is great, very light weight, and easy to compile from source. Usually available on pretty much any unix system. I love the fact that it doesn't try to do anything more than edit text.

ShakataGaNai 5y ago

Thank you Nano devs. I love it and continue to love it all these years later. I'm happy to get in the middle of any vi vs emacs fight with the battle cry of "Nano for life!". The looks on their face is always priceless.

tpoacher 5y ago
+1. Especially when they realise you're being serious. \o/

mixmastamyk 5y ago

Nano was a good alternative on Unix-likes in the old days for config files and such, since very few alternatives existed. However, CUA keybindings were a sore point. It could be almost configured to use them, but dragging config files around to every box was a chore. About tenish years ago, I found "ne" and it was a bit better, but not a slam dunk. A few years ago, I found "micro". It is what I always wanted, the simplicity of a CUA editor on Unix that I've used from DOS edit, to Notepad(++), to current GUI editors and IDEs, etc. I'd like a menu widget also, but that's a nitpick really. Anyway, since it is packaged in Debian/Ubuntu now I've little use for nano. I no longer tolerate programs with unique keybindings, sane standards are a must.

dang 5y ago

Some past threads - hard to pick out from other nanos - An Atonement of Nano - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063301 - Feb 2021 (100 comments) Nano 5.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995909 - July 2020 (195 comments) Fedora Approves of Making Nano the Default Terminal Text Editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23818199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23818199 - July 2020 (95 comments) Fedora Devs Looking to Change Default Editor from Vi to Nano - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21566828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21566828 - Nov 2019 (34 comments) GNU Nano 4.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19476526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19476526 - March 2019 (147 comments) GNU nano 3.0 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17946145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17946145 - Sept 2018 (43 comments) GNU nano 2.9.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15731079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15731079 - Nov 2017 (59 comments) Nano to remain in GNU - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420683 - Sept 2016 (65 comments) What’s up with nano? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958728 - June 2016 (79 comments) Nano is no longer a GNU project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11953044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11953044 - June 2016 (229 comments)

nige123 5y ago

Love nano. Many of the keybindings work in bash too. Check out: https://www.nano-editor.org/dist/latest/cheatsheet.html https://www.nano-editor.org/dist/latest/cheatsheet.html

ashton314 5y ago
All those key bindings came from Emacs originally

cicero 5y ago

I've always thought of nano as simplistic, but reading the discussion here, I see there is more to it than I thought. I learned vi (precursor of vim) in the 1980s and the commands became second nature to me. However, as window-based systems and applications became the norm, I found it difficult to switch between vim and Windows or Mac applications, including the web. A good example of my problem involves the use of the escape key in vim to switch out of text entry mode, but many other apps use escape to cancel an action. I got tired of typing a paragraph, hitting escape, and then having to retype the paragraph because I had cancelled my input. Nevertheless, it's great to have an editor I can easily invoke from the Linux command-line, so I still use vim for that. However, I will consider moving to nano for that purpose. At my age, I may never know it as well as the vi/vim I learned in my younger days, but it should still be useful.

tommica 5y ago
Have you considered using extensions for editors and browsers that provide ViM like keybindings?

xedrac 5y ago

Unless Nano has changed a lot in the last 10 years, there's just no comparing it with Vim when it comes to productivity. Vim would blow it out of the water 10 times over in just about every use case I can think of, except initial learning curve. For that reason, I agree with Fedora's decision to make Nano the default editor.

amai 5y ago

Is there an alternative programmed in Rust?