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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

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.
    - magicalhippo 5y ago
      I learned to always, always use -w back around y2k, when my buddy taught me Gentoo. IIRC he had gotten his firewall config messed up at some point, or similar, due to forgetting that. These days I'm still too scared of accidentally messing something up due to not passing -w, so I just do it. It's in my muscle memory after all so doesn't take much effort.
iheredia 5y ago
I pretty much agree and share the love for Nano, but - just as a comment - it happened to me that it wasn't available in some Red Hat servers. Depending on your regular work and the type of servers you SSH into, you could expect Nano to be already installed or not
- siver_john 5y ago
  Ditto, on a fresh Arch Linux install I was using once.
- easton 5y ago
  That's actually the entire reason I learned enough vim to be dangerous, on EL7 and below they did not ship nano in the box and there was a project I was working on where we had a bunch of 5.5 systems that had busted network configs. That was a.. joy, to say the least.
TechniKris 5y ago
> No matter where I SSH to (*nix systems) Nano is also available on Windows! I have it installed through Scoop and I use it when I SSH to my Windows PC from Termux on Android
GordonS 5y ago
I've installed nano on every Linux system I've ever worked on, if it wasn't already there of course. For me, it's so much easier to work with than vim, for changing config files etc. I only wish line numbers were enabled by default, or at least there was a simple and easily discoverable way to enable them.
- bombcar 5y ago
  echo "set linenumbers" > ~/.nanorc
  - GordonS 5y ago
    Huh, I seem to remember it being more arcane than that, but in truth it's been a few years since I bothered trying. Anyway, thanks - this looks easy to remember!
fouric 5y ago
Emacs has had TRAMP[1] (transparently allows you to edit remote files in your local editor using an SSH client) for literally decades now, while SSHFS has been around for nearly as long, and even zeitgeist tools like Visual Studio Code have equivalent TRAMP-like/auto-SSH addons. The "it's not available on remote machines" line of reasoning hasn't been valid for at least 20 years (age of TRAMP), except for the case where you cannot SSH and have to physically sit at different consoles. [1] https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode
- kstrauser 5y ago
  I love Emacs. I love Tramp. I love iTerm + Fish Shell more than eterm, though, so if I'm SSHing into a server it's from a terminal app outside of Emacs. In that situation, I'd rather use vim to make a quick tweak on a file than bounce to Emacs, tramp into the same machine I'm already in, and edit it that way.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Also, the OS that the editor is running on probably supports mounting a remote filesystem via NFS or SMB.
kstrauser 5y ago
Nano has/had some surprising defaults. Way back when, I was using nano to edit some file or another in /etc. When I wrote it out, it "helpfully" justified all the lines by inserting newlines to make them fit in 80 columns. My mentor looked at me disapprovingly, uninstalled nano, pointed me at `man vim`, and said "you're using this now. Thank me later." Thank you, mentor. I don't know if nano still has that as a default on any system that's shipped in the last 20 years, but I always give it the side-eye whenever a system has `EDITOR=nano` set and I run something like `visudo`. Am I about to break the entire system? Probably not, but to be sure I exit nano, configure `EDITOR=vim`, and try again. I know vim won't trick me like that.
- Sunspark 5y ago
  Nano is now the default editor on Fedora since v33. It makes sense. Modal editors have steep learning curves and were designed for an era of non-GUI interfaces running over teletypes. Everyone today knows how to use arrow keys to move around. Being dumped into vi, how many people will know how to go into the various modes to navigate and edit things? I run OpenWRT on my router, nano is one of the first packages I install on it.
- edflsafoiewq 5y ago
  That was fixed in 2019. Apparently the default hardwrapping was inherited from pico, which was for composing email. https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?55067 https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?55067
- tpoacher 5y ago
  Switching to vim because you don't want to press ^L (or set the respective configuration option in .nanorc) to toggle off hardwrapping is a bit overkill though ... It's not like "out of the box" vim is different in this regard. Half the time spent by a typical vim user with vim is coming up with personalised configurations. Surely if I said I'm ditching vim for nano because I wanted columns hardwrapped at 80 characters by default you'd look at me funny, right? xD
  - kstrauser 5y ago
mrweasel 5y ago
I had a co-worker, whom I miss every time Nano comes up. He strongly preferred Nano, but not in an annoying way. He’d go through all our documentation and change ‘vi’ to ‘nano’, just because he could. He reasoned that anyone could use Nano if required, but vi could get a little weird at times.

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.
  - magicalhippo 5y ago
    I learned to always, always use -w back around y2k, when my buddy taught me Gentoo. IIRC he had gotten his firewall config messed up at some point, or similar, due to forgetting that. These days I'm still too scared of accidentally messing something up due to not passing -w, so I just do it. It's in my muscle memory after all so doesn't take much effort.

iheredia 5y ago

I pretty much agree and share the love for Nano, but - just as a comment - it happened to me that it wasn't available in some Red Hat servers. Depending on your regular work and the type of servers you SSH into, you could expect Nano to be already installed or not

siver_john 5y ago
Ditto, on a fresh Arch Linux install I was using once.
easton 5y ago
That's actually the entire reason I learned enough vim to be dangerous, on EL7 and below they did not ship nano in the box and there was a project I was working on where we had a bunch of 5.5 systems that had busted network configs. That was a.. joy, to say the least.

TechniKris 5y ago

> No matter where I SSH to (*nix systems) Nano is also available on Windows! I have it installed through Scoop and I use it when I SSH to my Windows PC from Termux on Android

GordonS 5y ago

I've installed nano on every Linux system I've ever worked on, if it wasn't already there of course. For me, it's so much easier to work with than vim, for changing config files etc. I only wish line numbers were enabled by default, or at least there was a simple and easily discoverable way to enable them.

bombcar 5y ago
echo "set linenumbers" > ~/.nanorc
- GordonS 5y ago
  Huh, I seem to remember it being more arcane than that, but in truth it's been a few years since I bothered trying. Anyway, thanks - this looks easy to remember!

fouric 5y ago

Emacs has had TRAMP[1] (transparently allows you to edit remote files in your local editor using an SSH client) for literally decades now, while SSHFS has been around for nearly as long, and even zeitgeist tools like Visual Studio Code have equivalent TRAMP-like/auto-SSH addons. The "it's not available on remote machines" line of reasoning hasn't been valid for at least 20 years (age of TRAMP), except for the case where you cannot SSH and have to physically sit at different consoles. [1] https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode

kstrauser 5y ago
I love Emacs. I love Tramp. I love iTerm + Fish Shell more than eterm, though, so if I'm SSHing into a server it's from a terminal app outside of Emacs. In that situation, I'd rather use vim to make a quick tweak on a file than bounce to Emacs, tramp into the same machine I'm already in, and edit it that way.
908B64B197 5y ago
Also, the OS that the editor is running on probably supports mounting a remote filesystem via NFS or SMB.

kstrauser 5y ago

Nano has/had some surprising defaults. Way back when, I was using nano to edit some file or another in /etc. When I wrote it out, it "helpfully" justified all the lines by inserting newlines to make them fit in 80 columns. My mentor looked at me disapprovingly, uninstalled nano, pointed me at `man vim`, and said "you're using this now. Thank me later." Thank you, mentor. I don't know if nano still has that as a default on any system that's shipped in the last 20 years, but I always give it the side-eye whenever a system has `EDITOR=nano` set and I run something like `visudo`. Am I about to break the entire system? Probably not, but to be sure I exit nano, configure `EDITOR=vim`, and try again. I know vim won't trick me like that.

Sunspark 5y ago
Nano is now the default editor on Fedora since v33. It makes sense. Modal editors have steep learning curves and were designed for an era of non-GUI interfaces running over teletypes. Everyone today knows how to use arrow keys to move around. Being dumped into vi, how many people will know how to go into the various modes to navigate and edit things? I run OpenWRT on my router, nano is one of the first packages I install on it.
edflsafoiewq 5y ago
That was fixed in 2019. Apparently the default hardwrapping was inherited from pico, which was for composing email. https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?55067 https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?55067
tpoacher 5y ago
Switching to vim because you don't want to press ^L (or set the respective configuration option in .nanorc) to toggle off hardwrapping is a bit overkill though ... It's not like "out of the box" vim is different in this regard. Half the time spent by a typical vim user with vim is coming up with personalised configurations. Surely if I said I'm ditching vim for nano because I wanted columns hardwrapped at 80 characters by default you'd look at me funny, right? xD
- kstrauser 5y ago

mrweasel 5y ago

I had a co-worker, whom I miss every time Nano comes up. He strongly preferred Nano, but not in an annoying way. He’d go through all our documentation and change ‘vi’ to ‘nano’, just because he could. He reasoned that anyone could use Nano if required, but vi could get a little weird at times.