Thursday, February 3, 2011

Easiest linux editor for windows person

I am new to linux and tried few editors (vi/nano). Currently use nano but still little off from dos/windows world.

Which is the easiest editor in linux(ubuntu) for windows person?

  • This question is likely to garner very subjective answers. Personally I wouldn't look at it as an exercise in finding something similar to DOS\Windows but look at it as an exercise in learning the Linux OS, shell, and applications that you've chosen to use. Just as you had to learn DOS and Windows when they were new to you, you've got to learn Linux if you want to travel that road.

    mamu : Linux is opensource and probably has 100s of different options, learning linux and learning editor are two different things
    Christian Paredes : mamu: I disagree. Try using "more" or "less" without knowing any of the vi keystrokes.
    From joeqwerty
  • You can try joe or nano. They are pretty straight forward and easy to use. Although I suggest putting some time into learning vi or vim, as they can be quite powerful and make you wonder how you got along without it (in my opinion anyways).

    From vmfarms
  • Graphical one: gedit, it's the default text editor in Gnome/Ubuntu. If vi is too complex, maybe you can try its simpler, creamy version, Cream. It's pretty cool :)

    : Wish there was a way to embed this to terminal/bash..
    From coredump
  • Be careful with nano - it doesn't always handle word wrap correctly, so config files that expect things to be on a single line are sometimes wrapped in nano and treated as two separate lines.

    Vi/Vim does not exhibit this behavior and is also the defacto standard for other reasons as well including plugin support, scriptability, etc. If you try and adapt your Linux experience to be more like Windows, you will be disappointed. You should make a real effort at "doing Linux the Linux way" and trying to get familiar with the core userland applications.

    WoLpH : The nano problem can easily be fixed with the `-w` flag. But forgetting it can be a sure way to kill your config files. So if you use nano, make sure you alias it to `nano -w`
    From MarkM
  • I would recommend "mcedit" (Midnight commander) for a windows person.

    http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/mc/mcedit.1.html

    From Daniel t.
  • i use nano and I am yet to need to use anything else.

    From H4Z3Y
  • nedit was very popular with the ex-Windows programmers last time I worked at a Unix software house, which, admittedly, is getting on for a decade ago.

    From its Wikipedia entry: "It has an interface similar to text editors on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh, rather than to older UNIX editors like Emacs".

    From ramruma
  • Working on the asusmption that you're working on the command line I see 3 main alternatives.

    1. Use a simple editor (I prefer pico)
    2. Use a complex and difficult to learn editor, such as vi or emacs (definitely not recommended for casual use but very powerful if you're prepared to learn them and use them frequently enough to remember the key sequesnces)
    3. Use your preferred Windows editor

    Option 3 may sound a little strange but is in fact my personal preference. I've bee using the same editor (Boxer) since Windows 95, and the DOS version of the same prior to that, and don't see any reason to change. So, when doing anything beyond the most elementary editing of Linux files I connect from a Windows machine using WinSCP, in which I have Boxer configured as the default editor.

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