GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

That may be the entire reason you would describe an editor as modal, but those who don't like modal editors have a different reason: they claim that they are confused by stateful behavior: that the same inputs cause different things to happen depending on what state the program is in. Usually, plenty of modal behaviors can be identified in whatever alternative they endorse. The depth of that insight is what it is.

I get the feeling he occasionally used it, but not intensely for a long time.

Modal editing isn't something that comes naturally. You have to train yourself to use it. I believe everyone can learn to do it as if it's natural.

I learned how to use vi/vim a long time ago, and if you put me in the same position now I probably wouldn't learn to use it. It was a lot of effort. Having done it, I'm really glad I did, but it's hard to see how nice it is before you're put in the effort.

I also like dancing, and often a teacher will make you move in a way that doesn't feel natural. Months later, once you've got the hang of it, it makes total sense that that's the better way. It becomes natural. Driving with a stick shift didn't feel natural at first, now I miss the clutch when it's not there.

Sometimes the "unnatural" way is better. I'm guessing the same is true for the way chefs cut vegetables, or classical guitarists hold their guitar.

I won't fault anyone for not using vim, I understand it's a tradeoff and not everyone wants to put in the effort. And if you don't spend a lot of time editing text, it's not worth it.

Just to possibly annoy even more people: if you spend a lot of time on a keyboard, and you can't touch-type, I also feel you're missing out. (That wasn't natural for me at first either).

nano is anything but "not powerful".

i have yet to find someone doing complex editing stuff in vim that i cant do (i.e. with the same effort or less) in nano. Unironically.

> So, yes, there is a set of defaults on Linux. Vim, Emacs, and Nano are not it.

If you mean on Ubuntu, then sure. Ubuntu's target audience is essentially people who want an alternative to Windows/macOS. Not people who want the freedom to use their preferred tools. You think systemd is a sane default and advanced users "just have to change it if they don't like it"? Try replacing systemd on Ubuntu, let me know how it goes. You don't want snaps? Well it looks like it may get harder and harder to not use snaps, because people like you think that it is fine to enforce the most used tools as "the standard". You want to use a tiling window manager? Well many apps will just suck, because people assume that the "standard" is Ubuntu. Same for those apps that require network-manager, or the gnome keychain, etc. The "Linux way", IMO, would be to create CLI tools with minimal dependencies, and then build GUIs on top (maybe even specialized for the latest Ubuntu). But that's not what's happening. You want to use Firefox as a browser, and have a lightweight calculator app next to it? No luck, chances are that your calculator app is shipped with Chromium, because people decided that the standard is Chromium and webapps. And that's if you're lucky, because your calculator may be shipped with a full rootfs in a docker container.

So from my point of view, there are people coming from Windows/macOS to Linux for some reason (apparently not the freedom of Linux, because they don't even wanna know how their system works), and argue against my freedom, because if I don't want the Windows/macOS experience, then I am a weirdo.

> So, yes, there is a set of defaults on Linux.

You mean "the defaults of Ubuntu, which represents most Linux Desktops"? I don't want it. I want the choice to choose the distro closest to my preferences, and let Windows/macOS people choose Ubuntu. But that means that those Ubuntu people should not insist on everyone doing what Ubuntu does.

I think we're talking past each other. I'm not trying to win an argument, I'm just sharing my opinion. I reacted to that:

> Not having system wide keyboard shortcuts is one of [those big mistakes]: vim, emacs, nano etc all have a different shortcut to quit the app

In my opinion (and that's an opinion, not a formal proof), this does not work. _I do not want the same shortcut to quit nano, vim and emacs_. The author of that comment does, obviously. Which is why I said "preferably the standard should be your favourite shortcuts, right?". Not as a criticism, but in order to show that this is a preference, and my preference differs from the author's.

My preference is to have vim bindings be vim bindings, and not the system bindings. Sure, the system settings could offer a way to specifically set the bindings for vim instead of using the `.vimrc`. But it would not entirely replace `vimrc`, so it would split the config in what _I see_ as a weird way.

I generally don't see how it would work in practice. I can easily swap "ESC" and "CapsLock" in the system settings, but that's not the same level as setting the shortcut for a high-level action like "save". If you want to set the "save" shortcut globally, then everyone writing a program has to deal with it. First, I don't see how you can enforce it. And second, it makes life harder for developers. For something _I don't personally want_. Therefore as a developer, I won't follow your preference, period.

This is my opinion about the hypothetical idea of having system-wide settings that would unify vim, emacs and nano (that's the point of the sentence above, isn't it?). Maybe someone can implement this in a perfect way, and I would even use it (who doesn't like "perfect"?). But it _feels_ like I fundamentally disagree: _to me_, the fact that vim, emacs and nano all have a different way to quit the app is a feature, not a bug. Therefore it does not need fixing.

But feel free to explain to me what I am trying to say, and why it is logically wrong.