When I first learned about linux at Hennepin Tech back in linux admin 1 class I learned about nano for editing text files from the command line. nano is pretty straightforward. You can use your mouse right to click around the file your editing, and all the keyboard shortcuts you need are listed at the bottom of the window. nano is great for begginers to the linux os becuase it doesn’t get in the way of learning linux, but eventually it’s a right of passage to learn vim. For example, the jump hosts we use at my current job don’t even have nano installed. Just vim, so it’s a common linux application that you at least should know the basics of to get around a linux system.

vim is a different beast than nano, and a beast it is. Powerful, but it comes with a sharper learning curve. It’s made to sound scary, but really you just need to learn the keyboard shortcuts to navigate a file, start editing a file, and how to exit vim while saving or not saving changes to your file.

After that the sky is the limit. Some Developers, who may also describe themselves as a masochist when questioned on the matter, use VIM as their full time IDE. It supports endless community plugins, and is of course open-source.

Basic Commands

CONFIGURATION I USE

# JACOB'S VIM CONFIG FILE - LAST UPDATE - 6/15/23
set mouse=a
syntax enable
nnoremap <BS> X
set backspace=indent,eol,start