Nano is great for people who are new to the command line or for anyone who needs to make a very simple edit. If you're a casual Linux user or hobbyist, nano might be all you ever need. Emacs is a text editor, but it's so much more than that. It comes with a built-in web browser, IRC client, calculator, and even Tetris.

You can write bold, and caps, and punctuate it to your heart's content, I still "use what I use", and it is not vi, nor vim.

I'm not raising the name of it here, because it seems obvious that I've been using an entirely inappropriate editor where I'll find it's been gaslighting me, ere the last 40+ years.

The point there is that it is what I use. You don't have to. It's very clear what you prefer. What's the concern if the OP also wishes to use something different as well?

@ghdsportsapp: Nano is great for nobody, neither veterans or newcomers to the CLI. You have to learn 'shortcuts' in either case, and the ones vim has are not more difficult than any other.

@rtmistler:
Yes, it's what you use, you simply are using something that is awful. There are people out there that castrate themselves, and all such mortifications of the flesh.
If you want to use garbage, use garbage to your hearts content.

Fact remains, though, I am completely right about all of this. You simply choose to use something demonstrably inferior, and it's inferior even in your use case. As in, if you changed nothing but your editor, and did the same amount of text editing, any editor with a mode would be an improvement.
I'm almost entirely certain about that, and unless you have used vi or vim as long as this (I haven't, it's been years though) then you are unable to make as much of an educated assessment as I can from my perspective. I used garbage like this in the past, too, after all.
(The crux with anti vim sentiment is: Either you haven't used it, or only for a few minutes to say "I used it", and therefore don't know what you're talking about for sure, or, you actually have used it for a long time but for some reason went back to something awful, which I will doubt 99% of the time because, again, vim isn't more complex in simple use cases than the competition, while also giving a lot of power for little effort beyond it, also coupled with great comfort.)

Even in the face of things like 'colemak' or dvorak.

If you use those things (because they're more ergonomic than qwerty), but then use something like a gui editor that uses the mouse, then you lose all benefits from your nonstandard layout when it comes to text editing since the savings from keyboard layouts are not as great as the savings from a mouseless, arrowkey less text editing scheme.

In fact, I would even go as far as calling colemak users, in a way, blessed, by virtue of their 'hjkl' being broken apart, since hjkl movement is at the bottom of the motion tier list.
(I did a search in the meantime, because I consider a nonstandard layout to be a legitimate weakness to vim, but these nonstandard layouts also are a weakness to many other things, like actual keyboard hardware)
Still, it certainly makes it a bit more awkward to use in that case.

Anyway, it's all good that you use nano (actually, no, it really isn't ), but it would be really good if you didn't recommend it to anyone else.
Nano and co are the punchcards of today. I'm sure someone out there still uses them, maybe even recreationally, but everyone else should move on.
Please don't hold back humanity by continuing to legitimize objectively awful software. The era of these prank programs should be over now.
Let them die.

You should agree, being on a Linux forum. A moderator, even.
Nano tier = Windows.

@Geist,

I do not use nano. It is also not 40+ years old.

I haven't discussed what I use because it is not relevant to the OP's question.

I long ago stated that they ought to use something which is their own choice.

I feel you're championing your cause unnecessarily.

I don't champion my cause unnecessarily at all.
In fact, I just sat down, went to https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Nano/Basics_Guide
And, while you're right, nano is not 40 years old, you got me there, I still used it as an example for nano.

If one used nano for 40 years, once every three days (this IS just an example, after all) and only does what this gentoo guide does (well, this example also uses an insertion), then vim is either on par, or wins out by 2 keystrokes.
And since every three days for 40 years still comes up about 5000 usages (actually its more like 4800)
That's 5000 times 2 extra keys.

Breakdown:
So, even in this super duper naive use case, vim handily comes in par, or better, while offering a slew of improvements over nano all around, and it only gets better the more demanding the task is.

Edit: Purely inserting though it does lose, though, but again, just for illustrative purposes
(and there's settings for vim to start in insert mode, too, etc, no to mention...the human would be the text editor in this case...).

And again, so you're not using nano, but a gaslighting notepad style editor?
Still very likely inferior, I can pretty much guarantee it. Why else be so secretive about it?


Whatever.
Nano = Pretty much no raison d'etre whatsoever. Kill it with righteous fire and never let it get up again.

Glad to hear that this thread was marked solved.

A big part of the philosophy behind Linux is freedom. Freedom of choice to pick which software you wish to use. Not everybody finds Nike shoes to be comfortable. Everybody's needs are different...some just only need a text editor to edit a few config files in Linux, others might actually do software programming full time.

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Yeah, freedom of choice, but that doesn't mean that there need to be silly choices.
Now, the analogy will limp, like most analogies seem to (or at least I'm not good at them) but:

Are you very sore that there are no cars out there that need to be started with cranks?
Do you very much rather ride a Penny-farthing than a modern bike? (okay they're kinda cool, but c'mon...)
Do you very much rather have a warehouse sized computer in your home (you have to foot all bills, of course, otherwise the aesthetics are probably quite alluring)?

If there were no nano stuff, and all text editors all were modal, and it would be simply "that's how it works".
Why would newcomers miss notepad tier editors, in this day and age anyway? Granted, the world would have to be substantially changed for that to be the default one day, but it needs to start somewhere.

Nano like editors are like scheeles green in wallpapers. Like asbestos in the house. Like CFCs (FCKW) in the fridge. Like punchcards instead of a keyboard. Like thalidomide to give pregnant women.
I have to really scrape the bottom of the barrel of improbability to even give nano the chance to be of any use, but the blasted thing is there and it and it's ilk has been degenerating brains like no tomorrow.

In this thread alone.
I ended up with Gandalf and his ancient secrets (maybe the editor in question is Sam or some old ass proprietary IBM thing nobody else even knows about anymore), and a modern Heisenberg who did a single slit editor waveform experiment that did some quantum entanglement or something I don't have any idea what it means but it affected only vim negatively and nothing else.

Always a freaking PILL to deal with. A pill that should be spat out.
Can't ever be freaking sensible. That is the degenerative effect these prank applications have.

Turns humans into fools, and I really wish this thread hadn't made me as mad as it did. My opposition has not even the ballpark of an iota of a soupcon of a sliver of a right to have this kind of satisfaction in regards of what I had to argue against.

Simply rotten.

P.S.:
That example from above? That 'naive use case' where vim comes ahead 2 keystrokes?
If one keystroke, which you have to pay for using nano simply to control it, no matter how long or little you spent thinking about an action, you have to pay it.
If each stroke takes half a second to press down, then that's 5000 seconds over those 40 years if you do this one naive use case every three days.
This translates to about 83minutes of lost time. 40 minutes if a press takes a quarter of a second.

And this is just two keys over that timespan, every three days, for fourty years...and in reality you save many more keystrokes with vim and other modal editors.
And again, those keys are required keys, independent of all brainwork thinking about the text editing task at hand.

Two keys over that timespan and this is a super basic usecase, literally not even using the editor every day, and only for some insertion and searching.

You do not get this time back.
Ever. You don't.

40 or 80 minutes is enough to at least go through the vimtutor once.
Again, the extra keys in this particular example are required, you cannot get around them if you were to do that full task every three days for 40 years.

...why would this not go immediately into the bin in a better world?
Actual reallife stuff, I would wager most of my butt, has you paying through the nose many times more than this example if you use a prank editor, even worse with a mouse.

That's time you could spend snuggling your children or learning an instrument...and I wouldn't have to reiterate things like this over and over again, either.