Fedora Developers Looking To Change The Default Text Editor From Vi To Nano

[birdie]

I don't get it. Is this change for the sake of change? What's the reason? I mean, they can stomp on a hornet's nest all they want but at least tell the hornets why you're doing it.

Nano is 100% usable out of the box - there's no need to read any docs - all the commands are on the screen in plain text.

Vi is 100% unusable out of the box - you can't even exit it unless you know what command to enter and how to enter it. Oh, and you can't even edit any text either without first pressing "i".

Both are available out of the box in Fedora.

The question is the sane user friendly defaults. New tech illiterate users must not be subjected to vi which is an editor for IT pros.

/thread

[L_A_G]

I guess if you completely ignore AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Tru64, IRIX, etc. then your statement actually becomes true!

I love how most of those OSs are either on life support or literally dead and the three that aren't, are forks of the same OS. The two OSs that have been stone dead for at least a decade were a really nice touch.

[betam4x]

While we're at it, lets replace the Linux kernel with MacOS. Easier to use and all. We'll drop keyboard support too, because typing is too complicated. It'll be touch and gesture only. This is the future of Linux.

Found the troll account.

[betam4x]

Nano is 100% usable out of the box - there's no need to read any docs - all the commands are on the screen in plain text.

Vi is 100% unusable out of the box - you can't even exit it unless you know what command to enter and how to enter it. Oh, and you can't even edit any text either without first pressing "i".

Both are available out of the box in Fedora.

The question is the sane user friendly defaults. New tech illiterate users must not be subjected to vi which is an editor for IT pros.

/thread

Not only that, but most distros I've used in the past ship with vi, not vim. vim was always just a package install away for me. It looks like it will continue to be. (Not that I use any redhat distros these days)

[cynical]

Ship both for sure, but I definitely think that defaulting to a more user-friendly editor by default is a smart choice.

I can get around in Vi just fine, but honestly prefer nano for most simple editing tasks. If it's more complex, I'm in atom/vs-code or a full IDE anyway.

Why? Once I learned how to use Vi/Vim, it didn't make any sense to use nano anymore. Nano feels weird now, like a command line editor attempting to pass for a graphical one. And I'm not talking about advanced features, just learning navigation/insertion/selection in VIM, and the different modes. I prefer VIM even to a full IDE in most cases. One editor to rule them all.

[cynical]

I've always thought of Vi as a lesson in how not to design a terminal-based utility for a relatively simple task. Some people think it's intuitive, and I think those people have a very peculiar definition of the word.

Computers in general are not intuitive, and require practiced learning over many years. This is obvious if you have ever seen an older person not involved in the tech field try to use one. Learning the basics of Vi is done in a day, and getting comfortable with it took me two weeks of use. (it IS different from most editors) On the other hand, I do not require a mouse at all for editing, my editor runs everywhere, and it is so adaptable/configurable that I do not need to ever learn another.

Do you remember learning to type on a keyboard? Putting your fingers on the "homerow" positions, and practicing moving them to the appropriate keys, etc? It sucked hard at first, but after a few weeks you get better, and decades later I can barely remember the effort spent while I am still reaping the rewards. I think learning Vi is comparable.

[kpedersen]

Doesn't vi have to ship with the OS to adhere to POSIX or LSB certification?

[mrugiero]

Why? Once I learned how to use Vi/Vim, it didn't make any sense to use nano anymore. Nano feels weird now. And I'm not talking about advanced features, just learning navigation/insertion/selection in VIM, and the different modes. I prefer VIM even to a full IDE in most cases. One editor to rule them all.

Once you learned how to use it.

[arakan94]

Heresy!

[mrugiero]

Doesn't vi have to ship with the OS to adhere to POSIX or LSB certification?

From: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/
"This utility shall be provided on systems that both support the User Portability Utilities option and define the POSIX2_CHAR_TERM symbol. On other systems it is optional."

Take into account, however, that it doesn't seem to be the case that `vi` is no longer shipped, but that the default editor (EDITOR variable?) is changed, so it doesn't break compliance.