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System Utilities

nano as a default terminal text editor

Up to now, Fedora has not had a default terminal text editor, because the $EDITOR environment variable has been unset by default. Users commonly encountered a terminal text editor when using for example the git commit command. In such situations, the git version control system was choosing the vi text editor which had a steep learning curve.

In Fedora 33, nano has been set as a default terminal text editor. This change brings the following benefits to users:

  • nano does not require specialist knowledge to use.

  • nano offers familiar graphical text editing experience.

  • nano lowers the barrier to entry for those switching to Fedora, who do not know how to use vi.

  • nano is already installed across most Fedora Editions and Spins.

Fedora continues to install the vim-minimal package which provides vi but not the vim text editor.

Users are able to call vi to edit a file or to change the default editor from nano to vi or vim.

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