Mostly Neovim and Nano. Tried out ed in the UNIX4 tape that got recovered, was strange but fun to see where sed, grep and other commands got their name from.

GUI is still good old Sublime Text, but I almost completely switched to terminal based editors, I guess because of the nice work flow.

Vim unless I can neovim.

Being able to change configs on headless systems was my gateway, now I just prefer it

Kate 👀

Neovim for terminal but often I use kate for gui because I still don't find vim commands more efficient

Used to use micro but just switched to neovim, I'm finding it great, esp with the file manager built in

vim forever (i think)

Was staunchly team vim for 15 years, but now I'm on helix. As another user stated below, its like if vim were re-designed today, and without needing any addons to be a code-aware editor.

nano, vi, geany, kate...

I prefer nano - simple to use & always available. I manage remote systems often from my mobile using termius: config file editing, writing simple scripts for some analysis/automation tasks and recording task notes and status. Using a tablet I might use vi but generally prefer nano.

Helix: Barely needs a config. But they are also pretty close to done with a plug-in system for the stuff that isn't implemented by default :D

Nano. It's the easiest to use

When I first started using Linux I used Kate, I know, I know, not command line, but I didn't needed a command line editor for my own computer. Eventually I started using nano for quick edits and that became my default CLI editor for a while. I don't remember what I used as an IDE back then, but maybe it was Eclipse, although I think it was mostly just Kate.

Eventually I decided to learn either VI or Emacs, and a friend who used Emacs pushed me to that side. I ended up switching everything to emacs, CLI, IDE, I even learnt org-mode and had tables and presentations in it.

Eventually my pinky started to hurt too much, so I switched to Pycharm for python, and kept emacs for C++, text edits and org-mode. I ended up slowly switching emacs everywhere and reverted to nano.

Some years back I decided to properly learn vim. I have been using nvim for a few years, and while it's not the everything tool that emacs was for me, it's still pretty darn useful. I also haven't become a movement ninja and oftentimes I go wwwwww to get where I want to be. But still, there are some very nice shortcuts that I use a lot like Change Inside/Around or Delete X lines. Macros are cool, and sometimes feel magical, but other times they don't work like I expected and I can't figure out why. I don't see myself changing to something else, the ubiquity of vim shortcuts in other programs makes it very convenient when I have to use something else.

When I ran a trivia bot on irc back in the day, I used to use sed to edit question files. But mostly use nano now. I don’t do anything all day and COULD learn vim/emacs/something else. But I cbf

My first experience with *nix was a professor leading me into a server room though two biometric locks and setting up the config files for a compute cluster faster than I would have been able to open the files.

He was using Vim, and though it took me a while to learn, the sheer speed with which he was able to get us out of that unbelievably noisy server room sold me for life.

Well, I use vim for text edits and nvim+extensions for an IDE. As close to a vim purist as is reasonable. But frankly, it's the first one you learn to use well.

Nano 4 life

Acme

kate textfile &

Helix + my Nix-based configuration tool

Been using linux full time for 10 years. I do almost all of my system admin stuff in the terminal (my desktop, laptop, home server with a few containers). But i cant for the life of me figure out vim (like i know how, but it just doesnt click for me or feel natural)... i tried a bunch of times and will keep trying... but until then, its (shamefully) nano for me

My first computer was an Amstrad 664, with a green screen. I’m old. And I’ve been around Vim and EMacs from time to time and I love the console but for the love of god, since GUIs became the normal way to interact with computers, I just install micro now and have the same hotkeys across all the modes of interaction.

Speed of typing really isn’t the defining productivity measure for code.

Now I use VS Code in a GUI and micro on the console and that provides a reasonably consistent way of interacting with text.

Emacs → Vim → Neovim → Helix

I have been learning vim specifically because of VimWiki. It’s always fun getting a few words into writing a document before realizing I wasn’t in Insert mode, then I have to figure out what I messed up.

Team vim, but I've been using Helix instead for a year or two -- it's like if Neovim and Kakoune had a baby.

vim, mainly cause I haven't figured out how to quit yet.

NANO I just need simple, and tell an me how to save and exit without abstract key codes.

Micro, for muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts from when I was a mostly GUI user.

Emacs

vi, since it's ubiquitous.

I am a noob. My server is a MacMini running Ubuntu server because it was easy to install. I have a website, Jellyfin and nexcloud.

I don’t have the brain cells to understand VIM.

In the CLI, I use nano, always. In the GUI, I use Sublime text because the colors are very pretty.

Vi

Big fan of Helix. Best part is that it dose not need any plugins to be a modern editor. Just configure any LSPs you want and it all just works including things like fuzzy finding, multiple cursors, file browsing etc.

Once you configure nano with a ~/.nanorc file, it becomes a lot more like micro/helix without having to install anything on new systems. I just curl my config and I'm good. I have Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, 2 space tabs, mouse scrolling +selection, syntax highlighting, etc. There's a lot you can do in there, and that's not to mention plugins.

Nano, because it's the only one I can remember how to quit from without power cycling the computer.

Team Vim. Because I learned the vim basics once 20 years ago and never bothered to learn after that. :D

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)

When done with a command like this, hit Esc to go back into normal mode.

Second nature after a bit of practice! I used to work with a guy who insisted on using ed. That was... odd.

I use the vi family of text editors in a CLI environment because it is part of the POSIX standard.

Even if nano is the default, vi will be there too, and I can just use that. Plus, if you know some basic vi commands, then you can get by without nano, and you don't need to know nano to use it for basic stuff as it shows you the key combos.

Vim is worth learning minimally because it is so common, but U am team nano because I have enough info in my brain and I don't edit text files in the terminal enough to make it worth remembering how to properly use vim

I used Neovim for a couple of years and then switched to Emacs. I love it.

Whatever is installed i dont care tbh.

Vim, but I also find this battle completely stupid.

Emacs.

With all the vimmery going around nowadays though, I feel like I'm on the losing team. ;_;

I use Helix... Uhhh idk I think it's nice I guess

I use emacs

I use nano because I haven't learned how to use anything else yet.

I'm an emacs -nw kind of guy.

But if I have to pick one of your options, nano

Used to be vim back in the day, neovim with a few lsp plugins — hated the convoluted collection of config scripts — then into vis (modernized vim/sam hybrid) but now settled on helix. After a small adjust for some finger memory, I wouldn’t go back. A lot of quality of life features out of the box.

I just a modal editor that just works with some quality of life features as codebases I worked on grew in complexity.

nano. I can't memorize esoterica.

micro for sensible defaults out of the box, and because I don't like modal editors.

Helix

Neovim

Team Neovim.

I looked into ed, then decided its not for me.

nano for quick things; emacs for longer typing sessions.

Nano. It's easy and I've never had a reason to change.

"Why are we running from the police, Dad?"

"Because they use vim, son. We use Emacs".

Helix when I can install things, vi when I can't.

vim

I typically use nano for the quicker edits but enjoy using vim otherwise.

I only ever use a terminal based editor for making quick edits of config files, so nano works just fine for me.

I'm on team "whatever comes pre-installed"

When I was new at linux, I used nano and vs code; mostly because I don't want to learn the shortcut / keybind.

Started ricing with XFCE, tried to use keybind as much as possible and as minimalist as possible; that's where I slowly dip my toes into WMs.

SwayWM was my first WM and I don't think I'll ever switch other than that, that's also how I discovered vim; it was difficult at first but I got used to it very fast.

Just echo text to create a new file or use sed and awk to edit an existing file.

In reality, I use nano for edits and vimdiff for comparing files (usually a .pacnew after an update on a headless device)

@SocialistVibes01 Emacs of course

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 😂😂❤️

I have switched to using helix, so no matter which distro I am on I need to change it to be my default by setting the EDITOR env var.

I realized that I'd forgotten about pico and joe, the latter was my very first text editor (hated it!).

sed forever

mcedit

Vim forever, any flavour, don't care.

Why? Does actually exist anything else for the terminal?

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.

Neovim.

nano but i'm a casual. i can use vi/vim in a pinch, but i'm inefficient. ed and emacs are totally foreign

i tend to use a graphical text editor like Kate unless there is a specific reason to do it in the terminal

I use nano for quick edits. I don't know more than the basics of vim, and don't do a lot of editing on the terminal so I haven't needed to.

another vote for Neovim!

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.

Nano and I've actually started using Helix which I like a lot. It's keybinds make more sense to me than vim.

Neovim, configured entirely through nixvim. I always liked neovim, but it's never been as incredibly stable as now with nixvim.

Main/only IDE both in private and at work. Can't ever go back, muscle memory has ensured that.

For novelty I do install msedit, because nostalgia is rose tinted. But for realsies it's vim, not because I'm good at using it, but I'm familiar enough.

What to do other than installing nano and changing visudo?

suffer.

isnt the whole point we get to use the tools we want?

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.

nano

https://github.com/microsoft/edit

Seems I'm alone here on this but I'm team vis

I use vim. I learned it because I started on a bunch of hosts where I couldn't install what I wanted. But unless you have a similar restriction, go ahead and install what you like.

It's a good idea to play around with others to see what they have to offer, but at the end of the day, you do you

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.

Helix, it's a better vim

VIM Learnt it in my first semester and use it ever since.

nano or micro for quick cli edits. i prefer smth like vscodium for more detailed editing.

I still use nano, I tried micro and it's confusing af to use also it didn't allow konsole context menu to copy anything from it or paste anything from outside even with ctrl+v or ctrl+shift+v

Emacs!

Team vim! Learned it five or six years ago, and never looked back. I've also got vim motions enabled for my shell, in the browser (firefox with vimium), and in my window manager (sway).

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 was just now years old when I learned that mg (AKA MicroGnuEmacs) comes with OpenBSD & MacOS.

• https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src/usr.bin/mg
• https://github.com/hboetes/mg

micro for sure. But I dont use it as a main editor. Just for quick text file adjustments.

My first distro shipped with pico, so I often choose nano for an edit. Micro is fine, too, but I won't go out of my way to install it.

I challenged myself to write a couple of projects in neovim over a month or so. I finished my projects, but it still felt like the tool was getting in my way. Muscle memory is to break. Current job requires a bigger IDE, but I still do my commit messages with neovim.

Exporting $EDITOR instead. Also, i don't use sudo; too much for desktop, too insecure for server.

Nvim all the way

A few years ago I'd say Vim but nowadays it's Neovim for me.

Ed when i need to get into a server and i have no clue whats running.

Nano when i know whats running and i cant install things.

Vim when i can install things.

At wprk we use vscode wnd jetbrains products but they are omly ok. I still like vim more.

Have been using vim for the longest time, but I‘m getting into nvim :)

Vim for the most part, and nano for when I'm tired and can't remember how to work vim.

just learn acme