Nano, the slim *nix text editor

Nano, the (in)famous *nix text editor, that you will find invariably installed on any *nix system conceivable on this planet, has undergone a change in stewardship. I got interested in a Hacker News discussion over the importance of nano and why anyone would use it seriously. Here are my thoughts on nano.

I never liked nano. The only time I used it for a stretch was when for a year I used a non-GUI, X-less only environment for *everything* on my old ThinkPad running Slackware. I was in University then. I loved the command line so much I didn’t want anything else. That was when I used Pine for email and Slrn for Usenet (and elinks for browsing). While I remember using nano to edit emails in Pine (and later moving over to Emacs), I can’t remember which editor I used inside Slrn.

I am a thorough Vim believer. I have been for a long time. If I ever accidentally find myself on a *nix system with nano or pico as the default editor, I exit and install Vim.

However, in my almost 15 years using *nix of all flavours, I have spent considerable time using Emacs as well, both on the GUI and the command line. Eventually, I gave up Emacs in favour of Vim. I’ve stuck to it since.