Micro Text Editor: Is It Any Good? - A Vim User's Perspective

Micro is a little text editor that is supposed to be the next best thing since Nano. Is it any good?
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[@TheLinuxCast]

This video was released 2 days early for Patrons and Channel Memebers (Tier 2 and above) patreon.com/thelinuxcast

[@Little-bird-told-me]

small correction: _Members_

[@cybernit3]

*Micro Editor does have MACROS ctrl+u starts recording then ctrl+u to stop recording ctrl+j to play the macro --for wordwrap add this into your bindings.json config file "Alt-z": "command:set wordwrap off,command:set softwrap off", "Alt-Z": "command:set wordwrap on,command:set softwrap on",

[@bjorn7696]

I like how you did "man --help" instead of "micro --help" and then continue like you did the latter. 😄

[@TheLinuxCast]

Yeah, talking is really hard. lOL

[@itildude]

I discovered Micro a while back and love it. It's a great middle ground of functionality and simplicity. I do still use NeoVIM and Emacs but for quick edits I'm usually in Micro.

[@robonator2945]

Honestly I might start using Micro. VIM or EMACS might work for some people, but as someone who does other stuff on their computer besides just typing like watching youtube, browsing, playing games, etc. it's like I have to get into a completely different mindset everytime I want to actually type something, and frankly most of the things I have to edit day to day are more than simple enough for nano to do the job, albeit clunkily. Commands like ctrl-S for save are so universal, not having them on my text editor just gets annoying. Micro feels like an actual attempt at a user friendly AND decently powerful in-terminal text editor.

[@maxresfault7925]

I think nano saves with ctrl-s anc ctrl-o by defualt

[@darthinvader1937]

​@@maxresfault7925Nano saves ("write-out" as they call it) with ctrl-S but they cut with ctrl-K and exit with ctrl-X. Ultimately it's a non issue since it's easy to remap these keybindings

[@Riiku]

Micro is pretty good as a replacement to Nano, it's easy to use and the default keybinds for someone new to terminal text editors. But recently i'm kinda in love with the Helix text editor, it's a middle ground between vim/neovim and kakoune, it's SO GOOD!, I would love to see Matt taking a look at it as a Vim guy.

[@patrickprucha5522]

Very good review. I have switched to micro because of the copying and pasting outside the nano buffer. Also I personally don't think there is an appeal to have to learn a software to get to use it. We are not talking nuclear physics....just creating and revising text documents.

[@l.iwakura6553]

Its extremelly extensible, literally using it as my main editor even for development.

[@singletona082]

I write as a hobby. I also have vision issues. Vim for me has always bee noverkill. Nano for me has always been not enough. Emacs for me has always been 'yo dawg I heard you wanted an OS in your OS so you can have an OS inside your OS just so you can type up a few documents.' Micro looks like it will... MOSTLY do what i want.

[@DoltonI]

I had similar thoughts when I found out about it.

[@singletona082]

@@DoltonI Imperfect, but to be blunt? 'Perfect' would be recreating word perfect 5.1's text interface (the featureset is overkill.)

[@patrickprucha5522]

products like vim or emacs have their followers who have created a workflow specific to their needs. I don't blame people sticking with what works :D

[@zeocamo]

NeoVim also got the mouse as first class, it is turn on by default and it got right-click menu too. and you can click tabs to switch them too

[@richardmeyer418]

BTW - you can get copy/paste in Vim or most consoles by Shift-Ctrl-C and Shift-Ctrl-V - it certainly appears to use the system clipboard - I've been using it forever ... but I am old. 😁

[@wtfisgoingon535]

nano is great for light edition and its ootb on almost all distro

[@ArniesTech]

Exactly why it is my GoTo editor 💪😁

[@jeremietamburini]

To copy/paste some text with mouse or touchpad in linux, in most cases you don't even need ctrl-C / ctrl-v 😉 Once you select some text, it is immediately copied. To paste it just click the scroll wheel (mid clic) or the equivalent on touchpad, like 3 fingers tap or left and right click pressed together. I discovered just recently the advanced features of Micro... couldn't believe how good it is! I have treated it as a "just better Nano" but not really suitable for technical stuff. I was wrong! I've tried Vim and Vim-like editors, but I'm not compatible with "modal editors". But I like the idea of a text editor into a terminal and Micro can be my cup of tee.

[@zeocamo]

with the new lua API for highlight in Neovim, themes is 30-40 lines of setting colors like this at 11:10, but if you want to make custom colors for all your plugins then of cuz it is more

[@androth1502]

i just setup ctrl {i,j,k,l} for caret navigation in micro. works great since i can palm the left control key on my keyboard. if you love vim keys, you can do the same but with ctrl {h,j,k,l} instead.

[@burnt_666]

thanks for making the video and introducing me to this. micro seems like a really good fit for me.

[@zeocamo]

you can bind c-s to :update

[@mikedoth]

Micro is pretty awesome. The keys are a lot like regular desktop programs.

[@zeocamo]

for 2. you can also save your settings/options with the save session :mks! /path/file.vim and load it with :so /path/file.vim

[@JustAGuyLinux]

Big fan of micro. Nice job!

[@makeitreality457]

So NANO just got a whole LOT BETTER. Or I just never could read the help... I just noticed it does macros, justify text, anchors, and jumping between different sections of code. And commands. CTRL-T inserts the output of commands, like you can put the output of "ls" into the document, or use `xsel` to pipe highlighted text into an AI for some hot programming chat with a bot.

[@Little-bird-told-me]

I think OTB did a similar review few days ago, this was more fun :) _Micro doesn't have to try too hard to be better than nano_ : Matt

[@Bruces-Eclectic-World]

Awesome, something I can use! 😛I use Nano and I will give this a try for sure... Why don't people still use the 80 column rule when it comes to margins? We were thought to use 80 column in school typing class (Yes I'm that old!) and it has been the standard for years. Now for some damn reason programs do not follow that anymore... 😞 Hell 120 columns would be fine... Lol That is the one thing that Nano bugs me about is the 80 columns issue. Just keep going and going... Yes Nano has a .nanorc file and you can set bindings and all sort of thing like line wrapping. I have the copy & past set to 'ctl-c & ctl-v' and exit is ctl-x and save is ctl-s. Thanks Matt for the video! LLAP 🖖

[@makeitreality457]

Trying out micro-2.0.11-6 ... It has macro support on the keyboard help page. I modified nano hotkeys with `man nanorc`, so they are about the same as Windows for cut, copy paste that I'm used to.

[@BUDA20]

I like micro to quickly read code since it has good syntax highlighting out of the box

[@zeocamo]

Matt in Vim or Neovim if you type :map you got a list of all the key mapping

[@paulywalnutz5855]

i pretty much only use micro for quick edit, havent nano'd in a while, great middle ground whilst i convert to nvim

[@CyperN077]

Matt this is a pretty cool addition to add to your tool box. Would definitely check it out. Thanks¡.. I haven't used nano and ages and all that I see this probably never will ever again.

[@wyfyj]

Be proud I got Gentoo up and running. As well as getting a wacom tablet working. Thinking of using it as my mouse. I'm trying to use Gentoo as my daily driver for a month. Learning a ton. But I hop back on the best OS there is, for gaming... Pop!_OS :D Also trying to get vimium working on firefox

[@zeocamo]

auto saving is easy in vim, just add this to your config autocmd TextChanged,TextChangedI silent update

[@uima_]

Neovim's mouse support is quite good honestly. You can use `:set mouse=a` to open it or see `:h mouse`.

[@uima_]

It even have right click menu!

[@JZHarrison]

thanks, very helpful. using micro on my MacBook Air I cannot get the hash symbol. Option 3 does it in all other applications. Anyone know what I am doing wrong?

[@codeknack8158]

(Neo)Vim has a feature to auto save files whenever the editor loses focus. That is good enough for me. Auto-saving every few seconds sounds like a overkill to me.

[@johannn2357]

Neovim has a nice mouse integration, I think you can take a look into that and compare it to micro 😃 keep up with the great content Matt

[@wisnoskij]

I think vim is supposed to eb ahead on the mouse integration, they both suck tho.

[@linuxramblingproductions8554]

@@wisnoskij why do you say that mouse supports been good for me on neovim tho I don’t use it often because kb is better

[@wisnoskij]

@@linuxramblingproductions8554 When I was looking into some right click feature I ended up asking on the irs channel why my code, copied from the internal documentation, was not working and was told that nvim just copied the vim documentation but was not yet at parity with it. That feature supposed to come in thenext stable realease, so it is possible that nvim and vim is currently at mouse parity if that was the only missing feature, but ubuntu for example will presumably still be years away from getting that update.

[@linuxramblingproductions8554]

@@wisnoskij what was the right click feature?

[@wisnoskij]

@@linuxramblingproductions8554 `mousemodel=popup`

[@Prophet6000]

Micro is my main choice it is good enough for me.

[@wisnoskij]

wait, ctrl+c,v worked in a terminal? I throught you alwasys needed to add the shift?

[@Bruces-Eclectic-World]

Hay Matt! You can set Micro to wrap the lines in the settings.json in the config folder in your .config folder. Open the file and add this to it and it will wrap the long lines. I also included the setting so that when you edit a file, lets say /etc/pacman.conf it will ask your root password. No need to open it as Root... :-) { "autosu": true, "softwrap": true } Hope someone finds this useful... LLAP 🖖 P.S. I had to creat my settings.json file....

[@TheLinuxCast]

Oh, I know you can change it. You can change it in nano too. But it shouldn't be like that by default, which is why it pissed me off.

[@Bruces-Eclectic-World]

@@TheLinuxCast Yep I have Nano that way too, that was what gave me the idea... Lol Your right it should be default... 👍 LLAP

[@tubeincompetence]

@@TheLinuxCast And I so commonly have to disable wrapping instead :P But it depends on what I am editing.

[@thingsiplay]

Don't touch, only watch. You can have a quick look at Micro. But please promise me to never switch to Emacs.

[@TheLinuxCast]

I promise.

[@thingsiplay]

@@TheLinuxCast Thanks. I don't want to loose another good friend.

[@ssmith99]

The eternal struggle: The Church of Emacs vs The Colt of Vim

[@philippeheyvaert3742]

Am I missing something...? On my fresh Debian 12 installation there is a man page... Best wishes, Philippe

[@amerikraine3401]

Dude it had a man page lol I have it open. I have it open now. It also has it's own website

[@alexkorshunov4876]

Replace Vim with Micro. Runs smooth

[@JarppaGuru]

8:30 yes yes sound like nano to me

[@jeremy8364]

What browser are you using?

[@DMSBrian24]

Micro doesn't really compare to Vim, it's simply a more sensible Nano replacement.

[@ArniesTech]

Sounds like something for me to look at since I am a nano user ever since 💪😊

[@linuxramblingproductions8554]

@@ArniesTech don’t worry you will get there eventually buddy

[@Torpedo07]

helix text editor that's for me maybe the next big thing

[@cecece775]

Hi, just wondering how you made your terminal backend bloored ? cause i been searching for this effect for so long

[@ArniesTech]

Configurations. Matt is the king of ricing and having config files to meet his very taste. Also bear in mind that some editors/terminal emulatora allow for more customizations than others.

[@cecece775]

@@ArniesTech still not the answer to my question

[@ArniesTech]

Meanwhile I am here still using nano like a real peasant 💪😂

[@linuxramblingproductions8554]

Sorry for you bro that sucks

[@nevoyu]

You can script auto save into vim

[@TheLinuxCast]

I assumed so since there is a plugin for it.

[@JarppaGuru]

6:33 auto save is... edit and change mind oh my god it auto saved now change everything back. yup. use nano ctrl x save and close thats final lol. if not want make save dont save just quit. easy?

[@docusmonde7142]

Vim IS so difficult for me I like micro and nano are more simplier

[@eriklundstedt9469]

I use emacs, but I use Evil mode so I'm pretty much running vim inside of Emacs I highly recommend it

[@kalle779]

You are so funny and smart

[@itsfish8672]

GVM.

[@wisnoskij]

I am rather enjoying Helix lately. Seems to have a lot of potential.

[@auntiecarol]

Nano is hot garbage... doesn't do vim, nor Emacs, nor CUA keybinds. I mean, WTF?

[@JarppaGuru]

dont use it yet again anotget come. use nano. simple editor no funny busines. just write