
Fedora Approves of Making Nano the Default Terminal Text Editor - rbanffy
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-33-Nano-Is-The-Default
======
Jonnax
Here is the reasoning:

[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/UseNanoByDefault](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/UseNanoByDefault)

"By default, git picks vi. You need to spend time learning how to use it, for
even basic editing tasks. This increases the barrier to entry for those who
are switching to Fedora and don't know how to use vi. It also makes things
hard for those who don't particularly want to learn how to use vi. (These
arguments would apply just as well if git picked Vim. vi is like hard mode for
Vim, with fewer features, missing syntax highlighting, and no indication of
what mode you are in. Even Vim users may feel lost and bewildered when using
vi.)"

Honestly I didn't know that vi and vi were different.

I've used Linux for years.

I just learnt how to enter insert mode and write and quit.

These are the most uninutive applications I've ever used.

It's like people people reminiscing about how good the word 2003 interface
was. But on another level.

Where you have to read the manual to change a letter in a file.

The fact that this change happened today and not 10 years ago just highlights
the strange elitism you see for hard to use interfaces.

~~~
Akronymus
In my personal experience, if you want to spend the time learning it, vi/vim
is faster than nano. But for the VAST majority of people it is simply not
desirable/worth learning vi/vim.

Just learning the basics makes it usable but you will NOT see any benefits of
vim over, let's say, nano.

(Also vi should almost never be the default over vim)

~~~
dijit
vi being the default is not elitism or sadism; it is two decisions coming to
confluence:

1) POSIX requires vi. Merely the act of requiring it means that it’s a sunk
cost on every OS installation.

2) vim is large(r).

If you’re optimising for small installation sizes in order for the user to be
able to choose their own adventure (as it were) then vi being the default
makes sense from a pragmatic point of view.

They can’t remove vi without breaking POSIX, so I welcome the change, there’s
a lot of developers I know who are fearful of the Linux command line because
of things like vi.

~~~
barrkel
Amusingly, both nano and mg (micro Emacs clone) executables are smaller than
nvi, which is probably the version of vi you'll end up with if you're
optimizing for size and not going full busybox. vim-tiny is like 5x bigger
again, because you're getting the full vim executable.

~~~
dijit
The point is that you're including it already for POSIX compliance.

For much the same reason Teams is eating slacks lunch: if the 'cost' is
included for other reasons then it's a safe default because it wont cost
_more_.

~~~
barrkel
Sure. But if you're building a system down to a size, you're probably not that
concerned about POSIX compliance, because mere POSIX compliance isn't enough
beyond the most rudimentary of software. And if you're running something
statically linked with minimal dependencies, it almost certainly requires a
lot less than all things POSIX, so you can cut even further.

My point was on size, not POSIX compliance. I just found the actual sizes
amusing.

~~~
rbanffy
Is POSIX compliance still a major selling point? Is it still mandated by
regulations?

~~~
dijit
it doesn't matter if it's mandated or not.

If you write a POSIX compliant shell script then that expresses its
portability.

You can argue merits or demerits of POSIX as a system, but there needs to be
some common base regardless, otherwise it's the wild west.

------
reificator
Stealing traffic from [http://howtoexitvi.com/](http://howtoexitvi.com/) with
this move, this is unacceptable.

What if all the other distros follow suit and default to editors that new
users can figure out how to exit without restarting their machine? What will
howtoexitvi.com do then?

This is going to kill that poor site and nobody even cares. Back in my day...

~~~
sicnus
wtf is up with that site.

If you want to save changes: :w (write) :wq (write quit) :wq! (Override any
read-only perms)

~~~
boomboomsubban
If you need to look up how to exit vi, you probably don't want to be writing
any changes.

~~~
dariusj18
Especially with any damage done by typing random letters trying to figure out
what is going on.

~~~
reificator
I have no idea why this was downvoted, this is absolutely true.

------
raxxorrax
Certainly more accessible for casual users than vi.

vi users probably know how to configure their bash to change it back and will
reduce the occurrences of "This text file is nice, but how do I get out of
here?"

Nano is much less powerful, but still a really good tool. If the decision
doesn't end in a dogmatic religious war, I would be disappointed though.

~~~
rbanffy
Repeat with me: "ed is the standard editor". ;-)

~~~
teekert
Joe for life.

Kidding, joe got spoon fed to me with Slackware. But I actually like VIM.
Would be nice if it could detect if it was in a dark of light terminal though
(yes, some people use light terminal, I see them occasionally.)

~~~
rbanffy
Vim is my favorite sysadmin tool: it's everywhere and, for quickly changing a
configuration setting, it works great.

Having said that, I'm known for sometimes installing emacs and assorted
debugging tools in containers and servers when I need to look into something.

------
OptionX
Here's hoping some Microsoft big-wig read this and remembers they don't have a
default terminal editor at all since edit died. I don't mind powershell, but
having a self-proclaimed management platform with no out-of-the-box text
editor is just silly. And no, notepad doesn't count.

~~~
mariusmg
They should just bundle
[https://github.com/zyedidia/micro](https://github.com/zyedidia/micro)

~~~
majkinetor
micro is nice.

It doesn't work in powershell remoting session just like anything else CLI
based.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
When did this happen? I used vim over a powershell remoting throughout 2013-14
(to edit SQL scripts on a remote server without using rdp). Was this
capability killed in recent powershell versions?

~~~
majkinetor
It never worked for me. I tried vim and everything, even less can't be used.
For less to work you must use it on local station, i.e.

    
    
        icm -Computer remote -Script { ls | less}  #blocks 
        icm -Computer remote -Script { ls } | less #works

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I don't know then. I might be wrong and might have been using vim in a local
session but over a UNC path (and did other stuff with remoting, that didn't
need an editor). It's been a while :)

~~~
majkinetor
Yeah, I asked on powershell repository. It wasn't supported ever and there is
no plan to do so - its not an interactive terminal protocol.

------
timwaagh
Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean.

(seriously for the best. Vi(m) as the default editor makes linux less friendly
for new users)

------
pantulis
Are these Wordstar keybidings? The legend lives on...

------
sanxiyn
Very well done. Could have been done sooner, but better late than never.

------
znpy
One might argue that if you want to make an OS easy to use (let's say as a
desktop operating system for non-technical people) just the fact that the user
has to open a terminal might be a problem.

that being said... It's no big deal. If both nano and vi/vim come pre-
installed, I guess it's going to be an easy setting to change (I guess there's
going to be a EDITOR=nano somewhere in /etc/profile or similar to change).

on a personal note: the thing I dislike about "user friendly" things (for
example: gnome3) is that they tend to hide actual useful features from users
in the name of "simplicity".

I couldn't believe it when I installed a fresh ubuntu 18.04 desktop with two
displays and couldn't switch virtual desktop on the primary display "because
gnome says it's better". Like, wtf ?

Yeah yeah you can install an external app to enable that (gnome-tweaks iirc)
but are we serious?

~~~
jaekash
> just the fact that the user has to open a terminal might be a problem.

I mean why stop there, the fact that someone has to lift a finger might be a
problem. Why do we even require people to be able to comprehend language?
Heck, why do we design things that are not usable by your average garden rock?
This is just blatantly anti-user.

~~~
znpy
> I mean why stop there, the fact that someone has to lift a finger might be a
> problem.

Alexa, Siri and similar are literally meant to remove that effort, if you
think about it.

The usual OS that many gnu/linux distros compare to is usually Mac OS. As a
user, you can configure most of the things that you would like to configure
without opening a terminal, ever.

Heck, when I was given a macbook from work and had to quickly share some music
files with some relatives, I was able to set up the equivalent of a samba
share 100% via gui, and it worked.

Yeah if your target is the average user, non-technical (think of the average
grandmother/grandfather) to very-little-technical (office worker that uses the
computer but only as a tool to do their job), the fact that opening a terminal
is necessary is a problem.

------
ajuc
I remember time when most distributions included mc (with its text editor
mcedit) by default.

I've got used to that editor (it's actually pretty advanced, it has macros,
syntax highlighting, word-completion, and you can run shell scripts/oneliners
on selected text to replace it with the result).

Then most distributions removed mcedit and now I have to use vi (which I hate)
or nano (which is too simplistic for anything other than changing one value in
a config file) or install additional packages (which is often impossible on a
remote server).

------
seemslegit
But how are we to weed out the weak and the inadequate from the ecosystem if
not by having them struggle through 1970s UI conventions to accomplish basic
text editing operations ?

~~~
buzzerbetrayed
Yeah, because nothing screams modern UI conventions like Nano.

~~~
ABoldGambit
Reminds me of fish shell's tagline:

_Finally, a command line shell for the 90s _

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Nano is user friendly? It runs _in a terminal_. What is a user doing in a
terminal, if they can't cope with learning how to use vim?

The wiki page where this is discussed has a bit of feedback about how it's an
unnecessary barrier to entry to have to explain how to set EDITOR in .bashrc
before even starting on the basics of terminal use. Who is teaching total
beginners how to use the terminal on linux? Marquis de Sade?

I remember when I first started using Linux, having only used Notepad and
possibly Notepad++ on windows, until then, I immediately looked for a text
editor like the ones I was used to ... and found gedit. I think this was on
Fedora btw (some ancient stuff like 12 or earlier). OK, so I had used EDIT
before and I wouldn't be totally scared off by having to edit config files or
write bash scripts on a CLI editor, but is that kind of thing really newbie
friendly?

I mean to say- maybe this is a step in the right direction, maybe it's a step
totally still in the wrong direction. You want to make things "friendly" for
your users and make them feel cozy and warm in your OS? Keep them away from
the command line.

(Speaking as someone who is in love with TUIs and command lines, of course)

~~~
swiley
I don’t understand why you think VTE= user unfriendly. The only thing you
really can’t do in a VTE app is display rows of icons but I don’t think most
people besides app developers and executives actually like those. For another
example of a fairly intuitive mouse based GUI in a terminal you can look at
elinks.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Another thing you can't do in a terminal is tap on icons, drag and drop them,
long-press them and all those things that users today are well, used to doing
on their phones, which is how the vast majority first learn how to use a thing
with a screen that does things.

That's why I think that using a terminal is user unfriendly: because most
users are completely unfamiliar with them and many are even actively scared by
them and don't want to have anything to do with them. I bet if you asked
around many people would say they don't like Linux because "you have to use
the console".

Like I say, I love command lines- but most people, even many developers,
absolutely hate them and feel much more comfortable in GUIs. My observation
anyway. I don't know if you think different.

------
Santosh83
Incidentally does anyone know what Linus Torvalds uses as his default text
editor when hacking the kernel (despite him saying he almost never codes in
recent years)?

~~~
kryptiskt
He uses his own fork of microemacs:
[https://github.com/torvalds/uemacs](https://github.com/torvalds/uemacs)

Or at least he used to.

~~~
rbanffy
It comes for free on every Amiga.

------
realpanzer
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23810551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23810551)

------
mrlonglong
Personally, the first thing I do is to install vim and remove nano. Problem
solved.

------
mlang23
There is one thing I always do on a new system: Remove vim-tiny and nano

~~~
i6ruce
... and install emacs?

~~~
mlang23
I am a strange beast when it comes to editor wars. I am indeed an Emacs user
since roughly 25 years. However, being a sysadmin teaches you to be
comfortable with vi since it is just not practical to install Emacs on every
machine you have root access on. So I am actually happy to fire up vim to edit
a config file.

~~~
lokedhs
Well, there is Tramp with the sudo edit method.

To access the remote machine via ssh and then use sudo to root access the
files:

    
    
        /ssh:user@localhost|sudo:localhost:/path/to/file
    

This is using the multi-hop solution as explained here:

[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/tramp/Ad...](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/tramp/Ad_002dhoc-
multi_002dhops.html)

[https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/17725/how-to-
sudo-...](https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/17725/how-to-sudo-save-
file-in-tramp-mode)

------
lambdaba
If nano would have been the default, I'm not sure I would of learned vi.

Just a thought.

~~~
richrichardsson
> I would of

How on earth do you make this mistake when you literally typed "would have" in
the same sentence!

"Would've" if you really want to contract it like in speech (same number of
keystrokes; grammatically correct).

Just a thought. :-D

~~~
enriquto
>> I would of

I'm not a native english speaker and this error is extremely surprising to me.
While I can read english correctly, if I find this error my language parser
just panics and it destroys the whole sentence, like if it was missing a comma
between "would" and "of" and the rest of the sentence is grammatically
incorrect. For example: "He would, of all things, prefer to do X than Y".

How on earth so many people make this error on writing? Don't they even sound
different? The "h" in "have" is completely silent?

~~~
ajuc
It's one of these errors that native speakers are more likely to make than
even the beginners with English as a second language :)

~~~
enriquto
There's quite a few more examples of that. Like "their/they're", "your/you're"
"its/it's"... I can barely speak english but I would never make these errors;
how can you confuse a pronoun with a verb?

~~~
lambdaba
You don't really, my theory is sometimes the auditory part takes over mid-
sentence, whereas when I'm in my usual visual mode the errors stand out
immediately.

~~~
enriquto
Probably... in my case since I never speak nor listen to spoken english it is
mostly a written-only language to me.

------
flamesofphx
The loss of Vi? My faith in humanity has completely failed now :(

~~~
jaekash
Gentoo had nano as default editor for some years, maybe still does. Nano is
kinda garbage IMO but this in no way means the loss of vi to me.

~~~
blaerk
Gentoo user here, default is still nano! vi is there by default of course, but
EDITOR points to nano

