Why nano?

[nrl]

[papal_authority]

So the points so far for including vi are:

[1] Vi is part of the international POSIX.2 (IEEE 1003.2) standard.
[2] Vi is very small, so the space taken up would be negligible.
[3] Many people like it and it's easy to move from different UNIX systems.
[4] Nano can remain the default editor so it will not affect people who prefer nano.

The points so far against vi's inclusion are:

[1] You guys are all whiners.
Answer: Fair enough
[2] Why don't they install emacs then?
Answer: Because it's not part of POSIX and it's huge.
[3] I don't mind not having vi on the CD.
Answer: Then you won't mind if it is present.
[4] This [insert Linux distro] isn't POSIX compliant and doesn't have vi.
Answer: Neither does Windows XP. It's irrelevent. Let's make Gentoo the best distro there is.

Conclusion? Vi should be on the CD.

[abzs2k]

[placeholder]

Will you people ever stop?

[PowerFactor]

[placeholder]

Because on a scale of one to ten, the whole thing is really retarded.

[PowerFactor]

[Pigeon]

Honestly, if you really need foo on the liveCD, just use knoppix instead.

Because that's all the liveCD is, really- a linux distro that's booted directly from a CD.

[mastergoon]

gentoo 2004.0 livecd has vim on it

[Deebster]

[|cJ|]

i think they should include vim

i installed gentoo again a few days back and disliked using nano

using nano is so frustratingly fiddly when you are a vim user

[beastmaster]

I second Gentoo having nano as default editor, simple and easy (ctrl + x for exit and save file, see it's simple), less memory drain, so is pico, also nano is implemented based on UNIX pico , so they are both good.
Gentoo definitely needs nano in the liveCD, and in the system too

[quag7]

Though I understand the need to be economical on the boot CD, I really think it makes sense to include both vi and nano.

Everywhere I've ever gone in work or otherwise, experienced UNIX users have been in the habit of using vi. It really is ubiquitous. It's not that vi users can't use nano, it's that I imagine it's just irritating to have to use a different tool to do such a trivial task. I know I fly through text files quickly, and a lot of the keystrokes I hit are by habit (I am a nano user BTW). If I was forced to use another editor, even during bootstrapping, I certainly could, but I'd find it irritating.

It's sort of like, imagine if you went to use an ATM machine and all of the numbers on the keypad were backwards, counting from 9 down to to zero. Like nano, the keys are generally labeled, and you certainly could adjust to it, but it would be irritating to have to do that, especially if you had to use the ATM 10 times in a day like you might while installing Gentoo and modifying text files.

You obviously can't accomodate everyone's preferences every step of the way in a compact boot CD, but a system just feels...vulgar, without vi, even though I don't use it. I think it's a reasonable request.

I have been planning for awhile to stop using nano altogether and start using vi because of its ubiquity. There are several machines at work running a variety of different Unixes and Unix-like OSes that don't have pico (or pine), or nano, and only have vi.

Also - can someone help me out; I have a vague memory of pico not being able to handle long lines (> 255 characters) well. I can't remember the details; nor do I remember if it was also a problem in nano, but I suspect that it was. I think someone had a web page railing against pico because it had the habit of truncating long lines improperly.

I can't remember the exact details. Does anyone know what the hell I'm remembering?

It may well be the case that in editing config files you rarely ever create lines that long, but still that would seem to be at best inelegant.

I think all of the points are well taken in the sense that people who aren't used to a specific text editor would find nano the easiest (I find it easy because I've been using pico since the first time I ever went on the net, and used pine for college e-mail).

But vi is hardly a "niche" program. If there is to be one exception in terms of the boot CD and redundancy, I think including vi along with nano would be it.

As for the -w switch for nano, I'm so used to typing it that in the few instances where I don't want it, I find myself typing it by habit. It almost hurts to type nano without the -w

You could always set up an alias.
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[bkeating]

How hard would it be to stick vi on the CD as well so you can *gasp* choose for yourself.
_________________
I breathe drum & bass. I bleed UNIX.

[beastmaster]

I see the light bulb drama again,
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=70970

just change every "light bulb" to "editor"

* which editor is the best editor to edit xyz ( replace xyz to your need)
* which editor brand is under what coffee licence
* editor A is superior over editor B
* the technique of making editor A or B
* which editor is blah blah

like that

[justanothergentoofanatic]

[wdreinhart]

Aside from POSIX (which GNU/Linux ignores wherever it's convenient anyway) nobody has yet presented a technical argument for why Gentoo LiveCDs should include vi, but not emacs, ed, jed, ted, jedit, joe, jove, pico, teco, nedit and fte. I'm starting to doubt that there are any.

Nano works, and a guru who uses vi(1) can adapt to nano MUCH more easily than a n00b can adapt to vi.

(1) Outside the Linux/UNIX world, these people are generally referred to as "extreme sadomasochists" and referred to counseling programs.

[samuel.penn]

If you want to use vi, Alt-F2, login to the non-chrooted environment and edit files from there with vi, remembering to prepend /mnt/gentoo to everything. That's what I just did and it worked fine. Alt-F1 to flip back to the chrooted environment to run commands and stuff which needs to be in that environment.

When I had enough of a system installed, "emerge vi" to get vi installed and change the default editor.

My only issue is that vi is installed into /usr/bin rather than being in /bin, which means it won't work if I don't have /usr mounted (which will be when something has gone really seriously wrong, and my small niggling issues with nano will grow out of all proportion).

[gnuageux]

[GTVincent]

Vi works on any livecd. Before I chroot into a new to be installed system I just copy /usr/bin/vi and /usr/lib/libgpm* to the target system. This way vi will work in the chroot and I don't have to use the evil nano.

[apeitheo]

I agree that having vi on the cd would be nice, as I'm used to using vi, and when using nano, I'll end up writing :wq when I'm trying to exit the file But I can adapt, after all, Its only the install, and those new to Linux/vi can use nano with not much trouble. I think vi would scare people away...I know my first time using vi, went like this "wtf...how the hell do I exit this shit?" and after trying a lot of things, I just closed the terminal, and my file didn't save anyway after all that trouble...haha I don't think that there should be an argument between using vi and emacs, it's all up to what you want to use....

[ap viper]

Why not have both? The reason they have nano is because it's simpler than anything else, and it does what it's supposed to do fine (edit configuration files). I don't see why they can't put Vi/m on though, it can't take that much disc space.
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[apeitheo]

[Alph]

[psyqil]

http://web.bilkent.edu.tr/Online/Jargon30/JARGON_F/FOO.HTML