The BEST Text Editor on Linux? - Micro Text Editor

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

It has been brought to my attention that nano has some very specific reasons for working the way it does. While I do still stand by the great features that micro includes out-of-the-box, it is important to recognize that nano’s unique functionality and keybindings do allow for some very powerful workflows.

[@Lanzetsu]

Also Nano's Keybinding can be easily changed.

[@VallThyo]

I never got used to vim, so I always used nano and it's limitations were really hard to circunvent... until today, I will definitely give micro a try and see it works better for me than Nano. Nice and informative as always, thanks for the video!

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Glad you found it informative! I personally find Micro to be a nice middle ground between the limitations of nano and the complexity of vim, but also easier to use than nano!

[@no_name4796]

I learnt vim motions on vscode and then once i got good i switched to neovim, and now after 1 year i finally learned how to make a good config file with lsp and all stuff i want. That is to say, once you learn it, it's just top tier, nothing else will ever satisfy you! But getting from zero to a point where you are good enough to enjoy it, is very hard

[@iiwi758]

I initially loved Micro when I first tried it a couple of years ago, as it's very capable and extensible. But then I started to run into a few problems related to copypasting and formatting when working over ssh. As simple as Nano is, it at least has been very reliable to me, and it already comes working out of the box when I'm using a new VPS. I'm glad exists. I'm installing Micro again to see if those bugs went away. It'd be awesome if they did, because it's an amazing editor that I'd love to use with my servers.

[@theroguetomato5362]

What a great video for me. I love a simple editor, but also love to customize my editor. Looks like this is ideal for me. Thanks.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

I personally think it strikes that balance of features / customization and ease of use. Glad you enjoyed the video!

[@MESYETI]

nano actually does have mouse support but it's an optional setting that's off by default enabling it also makes the scroll behaviour change, the scrolling moving the cursor is just an effect of terminals sending up/down keys when the mouse mode isn't enabled

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Thanks for the info! I had no idea nano supported it.

[@TheChadWork2001]

While I thank you for your video, I disagree with you. Nano is popular because it's simple, and includes the command bar at the bottom. All you need to know to start using it is ^ = CTRL. I start Micro and I have no idea how to use it. All that text at the bottom is meaningless, except CTRL-g. If I type that, how do i get rid of the screen that pops up? ESC doesn't work, CTRL-q doesn't work. It's not intuitive. I would say micro is harder than Nano but easier than VI. Therefore I don't see it replacing Nano for these reasons. Micro is better for Nerds but not newbs.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

That’s certainly a reasonable opinion. I’ve personally found Micro to be fairly easy to use, yet more feature-rich than Nano; an ideal balance / compromise in my opinion. But that’s the real benefit of having so many great and varied options. We don’t all have to use the same things, and there’s an option out there that works well for just about everyone. I will admit that, for quick edits on a system where I haven’t installed Micro, Nano absolutely does the trick in a pinch.

[@michaelplaczek9385]

This guy got the beefiest battery known to man

[@noodle69]

i have tried micro for a while, but i still prefer using my personal configured nano with some source code modifications. (edit: there isn't much configuring to do other than syntax highlighting and some other functionalities which are super helpful, so for some things i wanted to be able to do with alternative buffer executions, i had to modify the source since there aren't plugins for nano. it was still very easy, being all in c, and prefer it to the other editors i have spent years with such as nvim, helix, emacs, and micro)

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Fair enough. I imagine you can do a lot with nano once you’re willing to work with the source code.

[@sandeepnaik6437]

Fall in love with 'Micro'

[@cybernit3]

Ya, I really love the keybinds with standard hotkeys like ctrl-c copy ctril-v paste. Only best things about nano is it a tiny bit smaller. Another IDE Text editor is Geany. But I still find NeoVIM or EMACS a bit complicate or annoying to use; and weird hotkey bindings. Question regarding about Micro editor: Anyone have a good config for basic C compiling for it? I don't know much about LUA, something I have to learn, but read it is fairly powerful. Thanks for the video and about VSplit and HSplit.

[@cybernit3]

Copy/Paste into bindings.json in ~/.config/micro/ directory "Alt-p": "command:pwd", "Alt-z": "command:set wordwrap off,command:set softwrap off", "Alt-Z": "command:set wordwrap on,command:set softwrap on",

[@BenitoF2009]

Micro is awesome. I use it for 3 years now. Never got used to (n)vim or emacs. The "out of the box" keybindings are great and also the plugins. And with ~ 12 MB it isn't as big as some other editors. So thank you for promoting it! ;-)

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Great to hear someone else also uses and appreciates it!

[@nxsmotorsports]

I, too, love me some micro. It feels very intuitive to me because of my experiences working with various text editors throughout my life. I use nano, vi(m), and micro across different hardware depending on what I'm trying to accomplish. I'm glad there are a number of quality editors available for different use cases and user preferences. They all have their place. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Glad you found it helpful! They all definitely have their own unique strengths. I personally find Micro to be the best balance for what I want, and what I think a lot of people”casual” terminal text editor users would want. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t better editors for certain users or use cases.

[@nxsmotorsports]

@@PlanetLinuxChannel Most definitely. I will say that I have to find a situation where Micro can't do what I need. I've never been using Micro and had to switch to a different editor to accomplish the task at hand. It has served me well over the years.

[@shimmysham8725]

228 hours of battery life remaining? Are you Nikola Tesla himself?

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

OhI’nothing that amazing. You should just see the size of the laptop! 0-i2--prod-dailystar-co-uk-0.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w820/s/i2-prod.dailystar.co.uk/incoming/article29303423.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/0_Image.jpg

[@eduardofreitas8336]

Ok guys, please don't make fun of me lol, cuz I'm very new to Linux, a mere Pop OS plebeian. I thought text editors were like Notepad? Wich now I assume has all these powerful functionalities too but in a sucky way because microsoft? I need to learn this power! Just now getting into programming so a good portion of this video flew over my head but I had no idea I could use my text editor as a terminal and ALSO to aid in coding. Do they all do this?? I love you nerds.

[@Erinsushygushy]

Nano has a flag (“-/“ or -modernbindings) that makes the bindings more intuitive (ctrl z for undo, ctrl y for redo, etc)

[@pablodenapoli1667]

The best condole ediror is joe. Is fast. It can mimic the key bindings of many othres (the default mimics Wordstar/Borlaand IDE). It has great block operatiions, etc.

[@nnnscorpionnn]

I stumbled upon with micro when I needed to copy all in a text file. Nano didn't let me ctrl+a so I searched for a much better editor. Micro came in that point. Since then, I use micro.

[@JacksonNick-j6i]

Nano is fine. If you need something more use Vim, Emacs, or even better; an actual code editor! Like VS Code or Kate.

[@SeliverstovMusic]

I have one major problem with micro: I can't copy any text from the screen when I use micro over ssh =(

[@magicmulder]

[Nano has Ctrl-X for eXit] “This is weird.” [Emacs has Ctrl-K S for save] “This is fine.”

[@gjermundification]

Why on earth would I ever user anything but [neo]vi[m]?

[@Tala2n]

I use graphical editors, except i'm in a pure tty, when I installed Alpine the first package I installed was Micro, so I continued installation in a slightly less hostile environment.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Very nice!

[@corycaserta748]

Hello, all; I had tried Micro in Android Termux a few months ago, installed Oh-My-ZSH for a change in shells, and now Micro hard-freezes on open - with any file or just a blank buffer - I tried CHSH back to default Bash, but it still freezes. I don't know how many files/apps I've insatlled since then, so I'm adverse to restarting Termux from scratch just to get Micro running again. Is there a settings file I could put in Micro .config to set up a 'safe mode' to get Micro running again? Thanks for reading this; Cory

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Hi Cory. Apologies for the late response; hopefully you’ve had some luck. You could try deleting Micro’s config file, which is located at ~/.config/micro/settings.json Alternatively you could rename that file to something else if you want to keep it as a backup to use again later. In either case, if micro doesn’t see that file anymore, it’ll start with default settings (other than key bindings which are a different file). Someone said they thought you could start micro with a no-plugins flag to disable all plugins “micro -no-plugins” but I don’t recall this being a thing, so you’d have to try it and see. Good luck!

[@BrettSurenne]

vi is the only editor I've found in every Unix version I've had to use. I had to learn it for configuration files etc. I thought pico was a godsend though. 😂

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Very true. Vi is everywhere! Haven’t messed with pico myself.

[@brunosouza2918]

🫵🇧🇷✌️

[@cromm6145]

It doesn't have syntax highlighting for *.conf-files, which are commonly used under Linux, but for *.ini-files. Why?????

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

I actually thought it did have it for .conf files. Maybe it would be because conf files often have drastically varying formatting; like, not a standard for how they’re laid out?

[@mitchtell6806]

Well I attempted to try Micro but almost immediately ran into a problem. I am a MacOS user and I use iTerm2 as my terminal software. When I ssh into a remote system that has nano installed, if I load a document and want to copy text all I need to do is highlight it with my mouse, and the text gets copied to my Mac clipboard. It could not be any easier. But in Micro, not only does highlighting the text not copy it to the clipboard, but even if you try to manually copy the text it does not seem to work, in fact I could not find ANY way to copy text from Micro. The other issue is the line numbers at the left; in some cases they are distracting and I don't see any way to toggle that display on and off. So I guess I will stick with Nano - I could probably live with the line numbers if I had to, but not the inability to copy text (again this is using iTerm2 over a ssh connection to another system; it may work locally or it may work using a different terminal program, but if so that's irrelevant).

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Hmm, that’s an interesting one that I hadn’t considered. I’m not sure about copying text to the local machine in that case. I believe that Ctrl+R will toggle the line numbers, though I can’t test this to verify at the moment.

[@taxaction1]

Informative vid. Thanks 👍.

[@Bekon241]

If you write book not coding Nano is much better then vim stop talk shit, PICO old dos editor is Nano now this apps is awesome not that lovely like Wordstar 4.0 on dos but still awesome! Micro suck!

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Nano has its place, and everyone has their preferences. But I would argue that Micro is just as good an option as Nano for that scenario.

[@rivibibuprabashwara]

It's cool. Is this have auto indentation plugin?

[@gamepunk7963]

there is auto indentation.

[@bramfran4326]

The features you showed are enough for me to never use nano again and use micro instead.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Glad to hear it; that was my goal. 🙂 Micro does have even more functionality if you need it, like recording and running macros or passing a selection of text through another shell command and adding its output to the file (like running selected text through the “sort” command to sort lines alphabetically. It’s quite powerful if you need it to be, but also just way easier to use than most other command-line editors.

[@CaribouDataScience]

Hey, what about JOE or JED?

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

It looks pretty interesting. I’ll have to check it out!

[@Skelterbane69]

Me, who only ever uses text editors for config files: But why?

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

That’s a fair point, and which editor probably doesn’t matter as much in that case. But, even with config files, where you may often have to access them from the terminal, it can be convenient for it to open directly in the terminal window in a text editor that makes it easy to copy and paste or has the syntax of the file highlighted. Then again, that may not matter to you for quick edits. 🙂

[@Skelterbane69]

@@PlanetLinuxChannel I don't really know what syntax highlighting does lol I just use nano for quick editing and saving

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

By syntax highlighting I mean that it will colour-code the different pieces of text based on what they do / mean. It’s really useful for programming, but sometimes works in config files as well.

[@KimberlyWilliamsch]

My favorite code editor, simple and easy to use. ❤❤❤

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Glad you like it; I whole-heartedly agree!

[@mikedoth]

How do you resize the splits?

[@janlochman1985]

No, it isn't, as a copypaste doesn't work. Do you have something else?

[@LupinxJigenTTV]

that's great but nothing beats the "Simplicity" of ed baby. KISS dude. This does look nice though, thanks for the video!

[@soloflo]

Is there a way to get auto formatting (e.g., prettify c++ code)? It would be great to have an AStyle plugin…

[@tgwnn]

anyone use joe here? :(

[@davidwayne9982]

THANK YOU so much-- iv'e had some text stuff recently I needed to make minor changes in and as you said- MANY of us do NOT code... and I damn sure don't. THIS makes it possible-- with Nano - I had things so screwed up I had to reload my whole system.. :)

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Hehe, I know that feeling when trying to struggle with Nano. Glad you found the video helpful and hope Micro is working well for you.

[@pyepye-io4vu]

You should make a video "Cat sucks! Use Bat instead!"

[@Sapious1]

I'm done with Nano, thanks!

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Glad you found the video helpful!

[@heinrichschiller4673]

Visual Studio Code ist the best Editor🎉

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Well I don’t personally use it, but I know plenty of people that like it. So I’m sure it’s got some great features!

[@ujjwalmartin7245]

Mousepad

[@EmaryTegan]

Does micro allow for the use of vim commands?

[@tjn6278]

Why use vi, nano or micro? i just use gedit. There's supposed to be some reason not to use gedit, but ive never had issues.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Honestly there’s nothing wrong with that. Terminal text editors can be convenient when you’re already in the terminal and of course they’re desktop-agnostic, so people often get used to using the same utility across distros and desktops, or even with no graphical desktop at all. Still, nothing wrong with using gedit. It’s a decent text editor that works well and is easy and straightforward.

[@OS-Advertising]

micro & mc file manager are life changers

[@Heroselohim]

Thanks man for micro suggestion! Amazing 🙌 If you have the time, can you show me how do you switch the file to be edited in the terminal (link?) ? You enter "micro " and then you start switching the file to be edited without typing. Looks like it

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

At one point in the video, I believe I was allowing up through previous commands I had entered to find one I already typed before. But after you type micro, you can begin typing the path to the file and press Tab to autocomplete the name of the folder or file (pressing Tab twice will display a list of all possible autocompletions based on what you’ve typed so far).

[@rektleet]

nano is something i would just use for a quick patch and easy one liner, everything else i would just use a code editor lol

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

That’s fair enough! I guess I figure micro is so easy to install and use instead tho I rather use it for all those one liners. A couple seconds saved over a hundred times is…well, admittedly only a few minutes. But hey, at least it has colourful syntax highlighting OOTB!

[@MichaelSharpTechniSmart]

Never thought I would move from Tilix, but the key bindings gives me all I need. Also, I chuckled with your description of nano's dysfunctionality. I subscribed.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

I’ve never tried Tilix, but it looks like it has a lot of potential. I find Micro to be the perfect balance of powerful features and ease of use. Thanks for the sub!

[@stevejohnson1321]

I'm not in the terminal so much, so it's usually mousepad or leafpad for me.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Those are both fantastic lightweight options.

[@native-nature-video]

Thank you

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

You’re very welcome!

[@muchamadyja]

how to use the snippets plugin, i just struggle to using this plug.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

I’d have to look into it. I’m not familiar with it myself.

[@patrickprucha5522]

micro! cheers

[@valso]

I've never done anything that someone says "you should do this instead of that" and I'm not gonna start now, just because someone dislikes nano. I'm only using nano for specific cases, like when I do changes to the filesystems and I forget to edit fstab to reflect those changes and naturally the system refuses to start after the reboot bc it can't find the old UUIDs. When that happens, I use nano for simply commenting the other filesystems, boot the system, use a GUI editor to fix the UUIDs and then reboot again. I have no other use for nano or any other cli text edtor. Nano's controls might be non-intuitive but at least it shows them right there on the screen in front of me, I don't have to be a fortune teller in order to guess what controls the non-nano program might have. And once the desktop starts, I use GUI editors, so why would I use a cli editor in desktop mode? That's ridiculous.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Everyone certainly has their specific use cases. Nano (along with most any other editor) is perfectly sufficient for those things; I’ve just found Micro to be a more intuitive alternative and wanted to share it because it didn’t seem to be as well known. I do believe you can get a controls sheet similar to Nano’s with a keypress (I think Ctrl-g or Ctrl-Shift-G).

[@valso]

@@PlanetLinuxChannel Sharing is a good thing. But saying "you shold use Micro instead of Nano" is not a good idea, it sounds like you're trying to impose it on us. It would be better if you had put it this way: "This is why I like Micro compared to Nano" and let the viewer decide whether they should use it or not.

[@educhibs3994]

Wonderfull

[@undergroundnews_dk]

i use joe

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

That’s cool! I certainly hadn’t heard of it until looking it up just now, but it seems pretty capable. Doesn’t sound the most intuitive to me, but if you’re used to it, then I imagine it’s pretty efficient (the same could be said for editors like vim or emacs).

[@undergroundnews_dk]

@@PlanetLinuxChannel its because its like a old wordprocesssor editor on CP/M-80 wordstar compatible keys thats why I use it and it can do cut/paste - replace text locate strings words

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Makes sense. That’s pretty cool!

[@wiretracecompany]

It uses lua, thats it, I'm using micro from now on.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Lua scripting can be quite powerful indeed!

[@stefandriesner5026]

It is possible to highlight 'micro' as a more fully featured alternative without crapping on 'nano'. Did you do any research as to *why* nano has it's unique key bindings or has so few features? Every tool is designed to meet a particular need, and until you write your own fully featured text editor, I would approach these videos with a bit more humility.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

That is a valid point, and I do appreciate you bringing that up. I failed to recognize that nano (its developers) has a reason for the decisions that were made and being how it is. Upon a bit more research, I can certainly appreciate the workflows that nano enables. I do stand by the out-of-the-box features that Micro has, but recognize that I need to do a better job of researching every aspect of what I cover, and understanding why things are the way they are. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.

[@Sub0x-x40]

get good at vim and never use anything else ever

[@vandorlokronika9581]

Just use a GUI based text, code editor such as VS code, Geany, Notepadqq etc. on desktop. Terminal editors only need it on servers or when you install linux and need to edit very basic things.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

There are plenty of great graphical editors. And for frequent or large-scale use, a lot of people would prefer them. But, terminal editors can be a quick and lightweight resource for the occasional need to edit a text (or similar) file.

[@benezen]

no nano is better. micro devs never fix bug about korean font in search menu. so i dont like micro and never use

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

The GitHub seems relatively active in terms of development, but I imagine that would be pretty frustrating to have long-standing bugs!

[@t0menlegam890]

used what u like..dont condem others..

[@bhavyakukkar]

it's called clickbait

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Oh absolutely! I just know that a lot of people haven’t heard of Micro or haven’t considered anything other than the default (usually Nano) so I wanted to cover how this could be a better option for some users. And yes, there is some element of trying to get people’s attention with the title and thumbnail.