Here's a bash script to install Nano Editor v4.0 with syntax highlighting enabled on the Mac (should work as-is on Ubuntu, Fedora etc. as well)...
https://gist.github.com/fevangelou/be744753730e86b8783fd481f...
GNU Nano 4.0
51–60 of 154 posts
Re: GNU Nano 4.0
#52"nano" is an interesting creature - it was originally developed as a replacement for the "pico" command that shipped with "pine" (an amazing curses-based email client) because the license on pico was just not really clear. I still use nano 50% of the time because it's so easy to jump into a file, make some quick changes, and jump out. Plus the mark/cut/paste keystrokes are seared into my memory after years of use.
What happened to pine, by the way? It was absolutely fantastic because it was minimalistic. I like mutt, but it's not the same.
There's alpine, but I haven't use it yet, so can't say if it's as good ;)
Re: GNU Nano 4.0
#53It's too bad the Windows Store only contains Ubuntu LTS editions. It'll be July 2020 before all the improvements from 2.9.3 on up become available for most WSL users. :(
That's super easy to get around. Install the LTS, change the release-upgrade setting from LTS to the non-lts setting (quick google will give the actual value). and run do-release-upgrade. I've been running non-LTS Ubuntu for a while on WSL.
Re: GNU Nano 4.0
#54It's too bad the Windows Store only contains Ubuntu LTS editions. It'll be July 2020 before all the improvements from 2.9.3 on up become available for most WSL users. :(
I've run Debian testing and unstable on WSL lately and it's a fine experience. I don't know about Ubuntu, but for Debian, it's a matter of changing your /etc/apt/sources.list to point to your desired version and then:
$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
I also run vcxsrv on Windows, and ssh X forwarding didn't work immediately, but a low-priority to-do is to use this to run local-VM X clients connecting to the Windows X server.
* I sometimes stop to ponder the things that I find acceptable to troubleshoot and the things I don't want to put the effort into. For reference, see above about local VM and X Forwarding....
Re: GNU Nano 4.0
#55"nano" is an interesting creature - it was originally developed as a replacement for the "pico" command that shipped with "pine" (an amazing curses-based email client) because the license on pico was just not really clear. I still use nano 50% of the time because it's so easy to jump into a file, make some quick changes, and jump out. Plus the mark/cut/paste keystrokes are seared into my memory after years of use.
What happened to pine, by the way? It was absolutely fantastic because it was minimalistic. I like mutt, but it's not the same.
There was a fork/successor called alpine, I recall having to setup for my wife. But beyond that I think that mutt eventually "won". (Especially when development started picking up again with mutt-ng, etc.)
I wrote a console-based mail-client with lua-based scripting, over at https://lumail.org/ but I don't think I have more than 50 hard-core users. It seems like most people use mutt, and work around its annoyances, or use web-browser for their mail.
(I realize at some point notmuch came out and became popular, but I've never had a strong feeling for how popular. I think I'm a little biased since I read of people using it, but nobody "local" to me does.)
Re: GNU Nano 4.0
#56Re: GNU Nano 4.0
#57I'm sure nano/pico and the like are nice but to me there's two things a terminal editor can try to solve for: being nice, or bring ubiquitous. The nicest ones (say emacs) are way nicer than nano in terms of features, extensibility, etc. Now for being ubiquitous, nothing beats vi to date. I can't tell what nano is aiming for? EDIT I guess I had assumed that vi/vim was significantly more widespread than nano. Maybe tha…
Why nano? nano is sane.
With Emacs/VI you need to bring a HUGE mental framework to just use it.
And maybe, with luck or some years of pain training, to just EXIT it :)
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Vim/emacs are powerful. Nice? Never. Easy? never. Good for most common editing task in the terminal?. Nope.
Claim that Vim/Emacs are good is like say "why people use Sublime Text when Eclipse is so much better?"
Except, with eclipse, you know how exit it.
Re: GNU Nano 4.0
#58>A newline character is no longer automatically added at end of buffer. yesssssssssss
Such an insane default. Currently programming a bittorrent client and was edited files to test some functionality. Was confused for a long time until I realized nano was turning my "echo 'this is a test' > test" into "echo 'this is a test\n' > test"
Funny you mention echo, which prints a newline by default as well.
Re: GNU Nano 4.0
#59I'm sure nano/pico and the like are nice but to me there's two things a terminal editor can try to solve for: being nice, or bring ubiquitous. The nicest ones (say emacs) are way nicer than nano in terms of features, extensibility, etc. Now for being ubiquitous, nothing beats vi to date. I can't tell what nano is aiming for? EDIT I guess I had assumed that vi/vim was significantly more widespread than nano. Maybe tha…
I use nano because I don't have to remember anything to use it. If you put me in front of nano I can open a config file, go to the line I need, edit in something, save it, and exit without knowing a single thing about nano. If you put me in front of emacs or vi I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking at.
I am sure vi and emacs are much powerful than nano, but the time I'd have to invest in learning them would outweigh the benefit. I just don't edit text files enough for it to pay off.
Re: GNU Nano 4.0
#60I'm sure nano/pico and the like are nice but to me there's two things a terminal editor can try to solve for: being nice, or bring ubiquitous. The nicest ones (say emacs) are way nicer than nano in terms of features, extensibility, etc. Now for being ubiquitous, nothing beats vi to date. I can't tell what nano is aiming for? EDIT I guess I had assumed that vi/vim was significantly more widespread than nano. Maybe tha…
Being the Venn diagram part of nice AND ubiquitous. Duh!