Most of the time while running SSH connections to remote servers we need to edit configuration files, read log files, take notes for other people and we do all that in the command line with a text editor. Now Linux comes with a huge variety of text editors. Some of them are built in with the distribution you have installed, others can be downloaded and installed via tar or apt and so on. But whatever the case is the editor we use must be lite, fast and comfortable for us to use. One example of a great but hard to use for new users is the VI text editor. Vi is great and powerful and you can do great stuff with vi, but for new users is very uncomfortable.

So in this article we are going to check for text editors that are lite, have great options and also are easy to use for new Linux users.

Article content:

1. Pico Command Line Text Editor
2. Nano Command Line Text Editor
3. Ne Command Line Text Editor
4. Tilde Command Line Text Editor
5. Jed Command Line Text Editor
6. Micro Command Line Text Editor
7. Midnight Commander Command Line Text Editor
8. Mle Commander Command Line Text Editor
9. Suplemon Commander Command Line Text Editor
10. Joe Commander Command Line Text Editor
11. The 10 best torrent clients for Ubuntu and other Linux distros [ in 2021 ]

1 – Pico Command Line Text Editor

Pico is probably one of the most easiest text editors for the command line a new Linux user can start with. It’s straight forward and all the key shortcuts are always in front of you. It’s lite, agile, can edit extremely large amount of text and it’s very stable. Using pico in SSH connections is great, the search option to search in files is easy and good. For starters this editor is one of the best and if you are not from the people that say only vim and nothing else pico can be a reliable partner at all times. Also if you are a Ubuntu fan, pico is already there installed and waiting for your commands.

As every software pico has droll backs, here are the things that we don’t like:

• Does not support working with several files simultaneously.
• Cannot perform a find and replace across multiple files.
• Cannot copy partial text from one file to another (though it is possible to read text into the editor from a whole file in its working directory).
• No regular expression search and replace

You can read all about pico in Wikipedia from this link: Here

2 – Nano Command Line Text Editor

Nano was developed because Pico’s earlier license had unclear redistribution terms, which means that nano is the son of pico an that means that it’s again lite, agile, easy to use and perfect for beginners or users which want a lite and agile command line text editor. One key difference aside from the license is that nano uses meta keys to toggle its behavior. For example, Meta+S toggles smooth scrolling mode on and off. Almost all features that can be selected from the command line can be dynamically toggled. And also if you are a Ubuntu fan, nano is already there installed and waiting for your commands.

For the droll backs we can say the same things as for pico:

• Does not support working with several files simultaneously.
• Cannot perform a find and replace across multiple files.
• Cannot copy partial text from one file to another (though it is possible to read text into the editor from a whole file in its working directory).
• No regular expression search and replace

You can read all about nano in Wikipedia from this link: Here

3 – Ne Command Line Text Editor

Now ne text editor has more of the look of vim you have to press : and type q to quit just like in vim. Ne is a free (GPL’d) text editor based on the POSIX standard that runs (we hope) on almost every UN*X machine. Ne is easy to use for the beginners, but powerful and fully configurable for the wizard, and most sparing in its resource usage. If you have the resources and the patience to use emacs or the right mental twist to use vi then probably ne is not for you. However, if you need an editor for:

• compiling without effort everywhere (or almost everywhere)
• fast, small, powerful and simple to use
• has standard keystrokes
• uses little bandwidth
• has a very compact internal text representation, so you can easily load and modify very large files…

Then Ne is the perfect terminal text editor for you. Now it’s not built in Ubuntu Linux but it’s very easy to install like in this example:

# How to install ne text editor in Ubuntu 21.04 Linux ?
$ sudo apt install ne
Code language: PHP (php)

You can check ne official website from: Here

4 – Tilde Command Line Text Editor

It’s not possible to talk about terminal text editors and not mention Tilde command line text editor. It’s undoubtedly one of the oldest and versatile text editors out there and is tailored for users who are normally used to GUI applications not the terminal. Now this may not be a power tool. But, for basic text editing operations, this text editor is absolutely very easy to use. For such simplicity we cant talk about droll backs! Now again it’s not built in Ubuntu Linux but it’s easy to install:

# How to install Tilde Command Line Text Editor In Ubuntu 21.04 Linux ?
sudo apt install tilde
Code language: CSS (css)

You can check ne official website from: Here

5 – Jed Command Line Text Editor

Now not only system administrators use the terminal or do ssh connections to use a terminal text editor. Software developers sometimes need such editors to make changes to they code as well. So Jed is a command-line editor with support for GUI like features such as dropdown menus. But it’s also developed purposely for software development and one of its important features is the support of Unicode mode. It’s not pre installed in Ubuntu Linux but the installation if as simple as in Tilde:

# How to install Jed Command Line Text Editor In Ubuntu 21.04 Linux ?
sudo apt install jed
Code language: CSS (css)

You can check ne official website from: Here

6 – Micro Command Line Text Editor

Micro is a command line-based text editor built to be easy and intuitive enough for users to take advantage of the features in other terminal-based text editors without the need to steep the learning curve. What we really like here is that it has mouse support. Also you can use multiple cursors and it has terminal emulation. Another good feature is that it’s highly customizable and has a plugin system. Again like the above editors it’s not pre installed in Ubuntu but is a one code line for the install:

# How to install Micro Command Line Text Editor In Ubuntu 21.04 Linux ?
sudo apt install micro
Code language: CSS (css)

You can check ne official website from: Here

7 – Midnight Commander Command Line Text Editor

Midnight commander is a visual file manager, which means it’s not a command line text editor right? Well not entirely, mc has a built in text editor and can be used to navigate through folders and editing files quickly so if you need a smart way for editing configuration files and making quick changes this is the perfect file editor and is also a file navigator – smart right? For the installation in Ubuntu we don’t have even to mention it it’s super easy:

# How to install MC Command Line Text Editor In Ubuntu 21.04 Linux ?
sudo apt install mc
Code language: CSS (css)

You can check ne official website from: Here

8 – Mle Commander Command Line Text Editor

Mle is a small, flexible, terminal-based text editor written in C. Notable features include: full Unicode support, syntax highlighting, scriptable rc file, macros, search and replace (PCRE), window splitting, multiple cursors, and integration with various shell commands. Now this editor to be installed we have to use the snap store so:

# How to install Mle Command Line Text Editor In Ubuntu 21.04 Linux ?
sudo snap install mle-editor
Code language: CSS (css)

Key features:

* Keep codebase small and hackable
* Minimize build-time and run-time dependencies
* Make extensible and configurable
* Favor simplicity over portability
* Use shell commands to enhance functionality (e.g., grep, tree)

What we don’t like:

• It’s not that easy like the all above text editors
• Sometimes it glitches
• Can’t handle large code
• Has to be installed with snap

You can check ne official website from: Here

9 – Suplemon Commander Command Line Text Editor

Suplemon is a modern, powerful and intuitive console text editor with multi cursor support. Suplemon replicates Sublime Text style functionality in the terminal with the ease of use of pico and nano. We realy like suplemon it’s realy easy to use has a very nice color theme, has tons of features but the installation is sh*t, not that it’s hard it’s just that it’s not a 1 click installation and you have to use pip3:

Key features:

• Small codebase (<10k sloc)
• Full UTF-8 support
• Syntax highlighting
• Stackable key maps (modes)
• Extensible via Lua
• Scriptable rc file
• Key macros
• Multiple splittable windows
• Regex search and replace
• Large file support
• Incremental search
• Linear undo and redo
• Multiple cursors
• Auto indent
• Headless mode
• Navigation via ctags
• Movement via less
• Fuzzy file search via fzf
• File browsing via tree
• File grep via grep
• String manip via perl

# How to install Mle Command Line Text Editor In Ubuntu 21.04 Linux ?
sudo pip3 install suplemon
Code language: CSS (css)

You can check ne official website from: Here

10 – Joe Commander Command Line Text Editor

JOE is a full featured terminal-based screen editor which is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). JOE has been around since 1988 and comes standard with many Linux distributions. Now we really like Joe it’s small, lite, easy, has a million features it’s easy to install in Ubuntu and we can’t find any droll backs so we think that you have to look no further for a excellent terminal text editor, here are the key features:

Key features:

• Multi-file search and replace- file list is either given on command line or by a UNIX command (grep/find) run from within JOE.
• Mouse support, including wheel (works best when using xterm). The mouse can resize windows, scroll windows, select and paste text, and select menu entries.
• Context display on status line: allows you to see name of function cursor is in.
• UTF-8 support, optional auto-detect of UTF-8 files.
• Syntax highlighting for more than 40 languages.
• Hexadecimal edit mode. Use JOE as a disk editor: joe -overwrite -hex /dev/hda1,0,512 (edit first sector of /dev/hda1).
• Non-destructive editing of binary files even when handling MS-DOS or UNIX line endings.
• Swap file allows editing files larger than memory.
• Context sensitive on-line help.
• Bash-like TAB completion and history for all prompts, or jump into the completion menu and use it to traverse the file system.
• Complete word in edit buffer by hitting ESC Enter (uses other words in buffer for dictionary).
• EMACS-compatible file locks and file modification checking.
• Shell windows.
• Multiple-windows onto same or different files.
• Compile and step through errors or Grep and step through finds.
• Goto matching character delimiter “() [] {} <>” which skips comments and quoted matter.
• Goto matching word delimiter, including XML tags and C preprocessor directives.
• Ctrl-arrow key block selection.
• Search and replace system, including regular expression and optional incremental search. Regular expression key for matching balanced C expressions.
• Tags file search (tab completion at tags search prompt uses tags file as database).
• Spell check commands which invoke aspell or ispell. Language for aspell can be passed through editor.
• Paragraph format which preserves news/mail quoting indentation characters.
• Unlimited Undo and Redo.
• Yank buffer allows stepping through and insertion of previously deleted text.
• State file restores history buffers, yank buffer and last file cursor positions.
• Cursor position history allows you to step through previously visited areas of a file.
• Multiple interactive keyboard macros. Macros can be assigned to key sequences in joerc file.
• Block move/copy/delete/filter.
• Rectangle (columnar) block mode- search and replace can be narrowed to the rectangular block. Rectangular blocks can be filtered through UNIX commands.
• Overtype/Insert modes.
• Indent/Unindent (shift block left or right).
• Auto-indent mode.
• Picture mode for ASCII graphics.
• Line number mode displays line number of each line.
• Powerful scientific calculator with block statistics functions (sum/standard-deviation/count highlighted block of numbers).
• Termcap/Terminfo support allows JOE to use any terminal or terminal emulator.
• Can accept data from a pipe, for example: ls | joe

# How to install Joe Command Line Text Editor In Ubuntu 21.04 Linux ?
sudo apt install joe
Code language: CSS (css)

You can check ne official website from: Here

Conclusion

In this article we reviewed 10 easy, lite, agile and really cool terminal text editors both for professionals and absolutely new Linux users.

From all 10 terminal text editors for us the three absolute best are in third place Joe in second place pico and in first place nano. But why nano? Well it’s built in and there is no installation needed so new users don’t need to make installations, it’s by far the most easy to use with the greatest amount of options that can a new user use with ease and it’s almost zero change for it to crash so in our opinion it’s the best to start with and after that you can go to vim.

• Another article that is The 10 best torrent clients for Ubuntu and other Linux distros [ in 2021 ]
  —————————————————————————————————————–

We hope you enjoyed this article. if that is so please rate this page with the stars bellow and subscribe to our YouTube channel or follow us on twiter.