Emacs.
With all the vimmery going around nowadays though, I feel like I'm on the losing team. ;_;
this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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Helix
I generally use micro on the terminal, kate or gedit in the GUI, depending. No hate towards the others, just what I've settled on over the years.
I'm an emacs -nw kind of guy.
But if I have to pick one of your options, nano
...but only to mod the repo config to install emacs-nox. After that having seen the resource usage is the same as vi just use what's most versatile.
"Why are we running from the police, Dad?"
"Because they use vim, son. We use Emacs".
Nano. It's easy and I've never had a reason to change.
I'm on team "whatever comes pre-installed"
If we're talking purely something basic to be able to edit some shit on the system i think i would choose nano, purely because i've used it for years to edit everything (yes, even config files in full programming languages lol) and thus i'm very familiar with it. If we're talking anything terminal-based in general, i like helix as a modal editor. I chose it over neovim at the time because i didn't feel like configuring the whole thing, and helix is pretty much ready to go with lsp and everything ootb. A few weeks ago though i decided to make the switch to emacs, since i use guix now, so it felt like a natural fit. I might check out emacs in the terminal at some point, but i'm sticking with the gui for now.
At the risk of restarting the Editor wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war) from days of yore, I find it interesting that emacs wasn't even in your list of contenders. I hear it mentioned less frequently these days, so perhaps it's going by the wayside?
For the record, I'm a vi/vim user! I had the privilege of being taught to use it by an RFC-writing greybeard decades ago, and have used it without thinking ever since.
For those who find themselves on a machine with only vi/vim, or want to learn, here's a quick primer when editing a file (usually done by typing "vi foo.txt" in a shell) --
:q! ...Force quit vi (:q also works -- gentler!)
:wq! ...Save file and quit vi
i (then type characters) ...insert text at current position
A (then type characters) ...Insert at end of current line
G ...go to first character of last line in the file
/foo ...search for first occurrence of "foo" in the file (hit / again to find additional instances)
x ...Delete character under cursor
:56 ...Go to line 56
yy ...Copy the line the cursor is currently on into the buffer
p ... Paste the buffer
r (then type character) ...Replace character under cursor
u ...undo (hit multiple times to undo prior actions)
Second nature after a bit of practice! I used to work with a guy who insisted on using ed. That was... odd.
:h?
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Nano and I've actually started using Helix which I like a lot. It's keybinds make more sense to me than vim.
Helix when I can install things, vi when I can't.
I generally install boþ if I can, too, because helix still has no equivalent for vim -d. Diffs are þe only reason I run vi(m) anymore.
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nano
vim
Helix, it's a better vim
Team Vim. Because I learned the vim basics once 20 years ago and never bothered to learn after that. :D
Vim sorely underrated. Great tools/hotkeys. Felt like a master pianist clacking away while the terminal went berserk until suddenly the 2 hour job was done in 20 minutes.
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I was just now years old when I learned that mg (AKA MicroGnuEmacs) comes with OpenBSD & MacOS.
Nano is the easiest most straightforward to use, and it's what I always use. I have nvim setup and I really believe it is better but I have had 20 years using nano and I really struggle forcing myself to switch and get used to it as it's so completely different.
I realized that I'd forgotten about pico and joe, the latter was my very first text editor (hated it!).
I use Helix... Uhhh idk I think it's nice I guess
There are dozens of us!
🤝
VIM Learnt it in my first semester and use it ever since.
Vim/neovim if you are willing to take the time to learn how to use / config it.
Micro otherwise, very sensible keybinds and ux that map to modern gui apps, though it doesn't come installed in most distro unlike ed and nano.
Neovim. One time I accidentally opened nano and couldn't figure out how to get out of it... Wtf is with those keybinds?
Lol at emacs not even being on your list. Suck it, emacs users 😂😂❤️
Firstly, Emacs is not an alternative to any terminal based text editor, it's an alternative to the terminal based workflow in general.
Secondly, Emacs users can live without the hype, churn and elitism of the vim ecosystem and with a better editor instead.
As the old joke goes: Emacs is great if you want to learn another OS.
I'm a barbarian vim user. Whenever I watch a real Emacs user operate a full dev environment inside of Emacs I'm always left stunned. It's a whole universe of functionality, not just a refined line editor like vim.
And not just an editor, but an entire environment! I've only been using emacs for a few weeks now, but i'm really enjoying it. I'm not a developer, but i still find magit really awesome to use for my git needs, and atp i've replaced yazi with dired as my keyboard-driven file manager.
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micro for sensible defaults out of the box, and because I don't like modal editors.
Team Neovim.
I looked into ed, then decided its not for me.
I used to use Neovim but now I mainly use Helix, it's really good by default, the most hassle is usually just looking up an LSP for a language and installing it.
My config file literally only has the theme I use, unlike the heavy configs I'd have to make so that vim/nvim are the way I want. I also like the multiple cursor approach it has to editing.
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