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Every once in a while, I find myself editing some text file on a remote Linux server. Most of the time, I do my best to avoid this, because I'm used to, and like, the windows way of editing files:

  • Shift+arrows to highlight text
  • Ctrl-X,C,V for cut/copy/paste
  • Tab/Shift Tab to indent/dedent highlighted text
  • etc...

I'm not saying that vi and emacs are bad, it's just that I'm not used to them. Right now nano is my editor of choice, but it has very limited support of cut and paste, no smart indent, and some unusual shortcuts.

so my question is: it there an editor that feels like Notepad++/Notepad2/eclipse/kate/gedit but can run on a linux terminal?
Alternatively, is there a way to configure vi/emacs/nano to feel more like those apps?

And please, no "you should really learn vi" answers. Tried that, didn't take.

UPDATE: I was suffering from keyword blockage. Googling for "linux console text editors" gets much better results than "linux terminal text editors".

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I know you asked not to hear "learn vi", but I'd like add one point to that issue. It's worth knowing the MINIMUM set of commands like (insert mode, delete lines/chars, save, quit). While I don't know your situation, I've had to edit files of many different linux/solaris servers and vi is the one editor that is ALWAYS installed. On many of the machines, installing other editors is not an option. Don't throw vi out completely, just keep in your toolbox. More tools makes it easier to pick the right tool for the job – basszero Nov 12 at 13:12
I agree wholeheartedly. I just find that answers like that get lots of upvotes and really distract from finding a genuine answer to the question. So thanks for leaving it as a comment. – itsadok Nov 13 at 5:30

4 Answers

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I did a search for the same thing recently. There are several (see JumpingPA's list, plus, 'joe'). Joe or jed are good choices for a no-nonsense simple editor that does more than nano. Diakonos is under active development, and is aiming at users exactly like yourself, but has higher than normal dependencies (Ruby), which not everyone would be able to install on their hosts.

An entirely different solution, which might work depending on your setup is to use a Windows text editor with the ability to edit files remotely. Notepad++, for example, has an FTP plugin, and several Windows IDE's have such functionality. The advantage is that you don't have to install anything on the web host, and you can edit in a full GUI.

Hope that helps.

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To add info to the alternative you suggested, I recently discovered dokan-dev.net/en which allows you to map a drive on windows to a remote ssh server. – itsadok Dec 17 at 13:18
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a quick scan in the web revealed: diakonos, nano and jed all are OpenSource

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These look promising. I think the hard part is making the key bindings work, which seems to be very fragile. – itsadok Nov 12 at 11:48
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Have you tried nano? The shortcuts are a bit different, but it's more "Windows"-y like vi and emacs.

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Nano is the best I got right now, but it's still too limited, as I mentioned in my question. – itsadok Nov 12 at 9:36
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NEdit is a multi-purpose text editor for X Window System that is available on all major Unix and Linux systems. Users of Windows based text editors should find NEdit a familiar and comfortable environment.

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I try to avoid installing libx11 on servers. That's why I'm looking for a console based one. – itsadok Nov 12 at 11:42

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