Which is your favorite Linux terminal text editor? I guess it must be one from the never-ending list of candidates, including Vim and Nano. Even if you’re free to install and use any editor, sometimes you chose the one installed by default. That’s why the default text editor matters.
Speaking of the Fedora system, Vi is the current default terminal text editor in most cases, such as git commit and command-line text editing. Now if you want Nano in Fedora, you have to run a single command dnf install nano. But with the upcoming Fedora 33, you no longer need to run any command to get Nano.
Yes, this is because the Fedora developer team has decided to ship the terminal text editor, GNU Nano, by default. This means Nano will replace Vi as the default editor in Fedora 33 Linux distribution.
If you’re confused between Vi and Vim, let me tell you that Vim is an improved version of Vi with additional features.
The change comes amid the ongoing development for the upcoming Fedora 33. Along with other system-wide changes, a proposal was sent to make Nano the default text editor.
Later, during the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) meeting last week, several features for Fedora 33 were approved, including Nano text editor by default in the Fedora system.
As the proposal cites, users need to learn the mode concept of Vi even for basic editing tasks. It makes it hard for new users to understand and use Vi.
Unlike Vi, Nano doesn’t have any modes, which gives the user a shallow learning curve and lets them interact directly with text using user-friendly graphical text editing.
Hence, this proposal will make Nano the default editor across all of Fedora’s editions. However, you still have vi pre-installed owing to the vim-minimal package.
