me like use nano. nano say how do thing. nano exit easy.
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.
Micro for the win
Helix:

My computer my choice
There is a right choice and you know it. Stop bring silly and say it out loud!
(Duck and cover, flame war!)
nano gang represent😎
I can use Vim, it was the choice for years. But I actually like using nano because it’s what I need and all I need.
I actually prefer micro
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. 😄
This is what i use vim for. Vim doesn’t necessarily have to be a full blown ide with 30 plugins
Vim does not just work if you don’t know how to get into edit mode and save and quit from there. Nano even has built in search and replace.
Funny story, when i first got into linux (almost a decade ago), I accidentally opened nano pasting some random command off the internet and didn’t know how to close it because I didn’t know what the ^ symbol meant.
I had successfully been quiting (and using) vim for a few months at this point.
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.
vim guy, emacs guy look big brain. me brain smol. me bathe yesterday, thank you.
Vim users: “I feel bad for you”
Nano users: “I don’t think about you at all”
Nano users :
Me no think
Nano users have more important things to think about, saying this as an nvim user
yeah, like where the “any” key is on their keyboard
OP suggests otherwise.
Oh yeah? Well this says otherwise.
I think it’s more likely the opposite.
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
Ah, the famous NCIS way of exiting editors.
Thanks, I hate it!
You should all try fresh (the editor)…
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.
I see vim preinstalled more than nano (e.g. in container images). I’ve been trying to convert to micro, though. It has better support for terminal emulators than nano.
I very rarely see people hate nano (except a few comments in this thread), and I always see nano recommended as the text editor when people give advice on doing things in the command line
micro > *
That greate than sign and the name clashes.
micro > nano. :p
I can get onboard with that!
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.
I do appreciate this in nano. It helps me complete the new container config occasionally required to install vim.
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.
It has nothing to do with intelligence. vi and emacs are just rote memorization and also endless installation of plugins and configuration. They are slow to pick up, but very powerful and also ergonomic once you know what to do.
A modern GUI like CSCode is faster to pickup and immediately very powerful.
A good emacs or vim configuration tailored to your needs can stay with you for decades. It’s stable, reliable, and does everything already. vim has released less than one point update per year for more than 2 years. During that time Sublime and VSCode had dozens, if not hundreds.
For most people the choice of editor doesn’t make a huge difference. They spend far more time reading than writing code.
Nano is the right choice for you.
I use emacs but it’s only convenient to me with a lot of custom stuff on top. Vanilla emacs tho, hell no.
neovim user (inside zellij) and same. More of a full blown IDE than an editor.
Also for the keybind memory impaired like myself:
Yep, I’ve gradually gone from using vim motions in VSCode to using Neovim with basically all the functionality I need for backend (.NET and TypeScript) and infrastructure work.
There are still some things I have to rebuild some muscle memory for, but it’s been great. I haven’t made it to zellij yet but that’s the next step.
Hey, what’s the benefit in using vim with containers? I usually just apt install and get on with it.
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.
CTRL-K,K,K…
That’s racist
Omega-level container brain
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.





