The default virtual/editor should be...

[Deepak420]

I think that nano should be the default editor, though vi should be available without needing to emerge it.

[Monkeh]

[Shadow Skill]

Well at least nano still worked for me where vim did not because of a borked glibc.
_________________
Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

[AllenJB]

Nano - purely for usability.

I remember the first few times I tried to use vim. The first one you have to get over is "What? Why the hell isn't it typing what I type?" - then you discover it has 3 modes - command, insert and replace and you have to go into insert or replace mode to edit anything.

Now how do I save and exit? NFI. Where's the help? NFI.
Some time later after asking questions you finalyl discover how to save, close and get the _massive_ help up - and if you're lucky, how to search through the help to find what you want without having to navigate the maze of chapters.

Then you want to search and replace? Yay - now you have to learn the <sarcasm>wonderfully simple</sarcasm> syntax of regular expressions (I'm talking from the point of a newbie here, who may never have don any programming).

Nano:
Search? Well you press the key combo at the bottom of the screen.
Replace? That's under search (which is logical and easy enough to find)
Save? Again, right there in the command list.
Quit? Again - right there.

Yes, when users get more advanced they'll probably be wanting to learn vim or emacs, but as the defualt editor of a stage 3, I'd say nano. And I should hoope that anyone who wants to use vim is intelligent enough to realise it's a short "emerge vim" away.

Allen

[Shadow Skill]

<off-topic>Regular expressions are a real mind fuck I had to dive right into them for a little wrapper script I was writing even the incredibly well written Programming Ruby had me completely and utterly lost with regards to regexps.</off-topic>
_________________
Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

[Raftysworld]

[Ateo]

I vote nano since nano is simple and intuitive.

[loki99]

[ciaranm]

[codergeek42]

[Suicidal]

I voted vim because thats just the way things should be. I still think nano and vim should be installed by default because I have had vim break during perl upgrades.

[wuzzerd]

There's always ed or we could port in edlin from dos.

I say nano since joe isn't there. It looks a lot like pico. Funny Suse always installs joe and mc for me, no one else does, at least in gentoo I can emerge them right away.

I've been using Linux forever and the most frustrating thing for me is to get stuck in vi when someone has set it as default editor.

Another option is to use echo, and have a big sed tutorial to help correct errors. Lol...

[omp]

[codergeek42]

[amne]

Nano - because it's simple and everyone can use it easily. The Live CD is supposed to be helpful, not push people into getting skills with some editor.
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Dinosaur week! (Ok, this thread is so last week)

[krolden]

I don't think it really matters, as long as you give somewhat of an introduction in the handbook. Basically all they need to know is "i" to insert and ":wq" to save and quit editor. If a new user can't handle that they shouldn't IMHO be using this distro.

[Fran]

I voted vim. I love emacs, but it might be a bit overkill as the default editor. And I like vim a lot, too.

I just hate nano. The first commands I type after chrooting when installing are: env-update; source /etc/profile; emerge --sync; emerge -C nano; emerge vim.

[aidanjt]

I think there's overwhelming majority use of vim where Gentoo is concerned, that alone is reason enough to *include* vim in the stage 3 tarball. I mean it is on the LiveCD afterall, its a bit of a pain using vim on the livecd, then chrooting you're back to nasty old nano. :/

[sonicbhoc]

I tried using VIM once, just to check it out. I had no way to close it so I just shut my whole computer down and turned it back on.

It's not easy to use. No way in heck should VIM be default.

I tried using Emacs. Luckilly, I was able to instinctively guess that the menu had to be an F button (F10). So I could close out of it. It took me 5 minutes to learn Emacs. However, I don't think people want to take 5 minutes to learn to use an editor.

No way in heck should Emacs be a default editor.

Nano is mindnumbingly easy to use, and has all of the instructions at the bottom of the page. It's perfect for newbs and quick editing, which is what most newbs will do: use their default editor for 10 seconds and then jump as fast as they can back into their fancy graphical desktops.

Nano fits the bill. I dare you to try and find a windows user who has never heard of Linux to attempt to use VIM. If they are anything like me, they won't figure out how to exit the thing...

[yokem55]

[Monkeh]

[stealthy]

This is personal opinion, please don't get mad at me

For the longest time I had been using nano, as many other have pointed out (cause it straight forward etc. etc.), any newbie can see how to use it and stuff, and basically stayed stuck to it, it wasn't until, when I was fooling around with config files etc later on, I started to think there has to be better editor, I am not quite sure if I even understood what the word, "better", entailed. On one hand, I was used to gui editors, and on other I had and wanted to learn cli editors.

In nano, moving left, right, up, down, typing text is easy and straight forward but thats where it ends. So one day I ended up installing vim(simply by looking whats available in app-editors)

low and behold, I had something I didn't know how to use. Not to just give up so easy, I must have figured out command mode /insert mode within first 10 seconds, and right at that point, I realised I already have as much functionality as nano, once i was in insert mode that is. It was actually the command mode what enticed me.

Ever had to search for 1004th line in a file, make changes put it somewhere else....it was so easy. Now let me clarify easy. See the way I looked at it, only few basic things in nano were intutitve, rest you had to look up, as to what the command was, which is no different in vim. I think, a person, already needs to know what they want the editor to do or be capable of. I am not saying nano is any less capable than vim or vice-versa, its just that learning vim while initially was cumbersome and hard..but that initial phase only lasted about 20-30mins, after that vim became so much easier and faster to use. This is wierd because I had just started using vim about 2 months ago, before than for about past 6 years I've had been using nano.

In the end I should point out, that I found learning the command syntax for vim to be easier and that was the selling point for me, some might find nano's easier, all the power to them. In the end, all I wanted was an editor which was smarter than a typical notepad.

Thanks
_________________
All your Gentoo are belong to us.

[sonicbhoc]

[mrsteven]

In spite of the fact that I am an Emacs user, I've also voted for nano, since it is small and easy to use. Emacs is too fat and vim is too difficult to use, especially when you install Gentoo for the first time you are busy enough with learning how your new operating system works. I don't know how many users also want to learn how to use an editor, then.
_________________
Unix philosophy: "Do one thing and do it well."
systemd: "Do everything and do it wrong."

[Raftysworld]