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".
213 Answers
Have a look at the Sanos editor:
Only a 28k binary can do what all those other editors try to -- and fail.
It does exactly what the OP asked for:
Shift+arrows to highlight text
Ctrl-X,C,V for cut/copy/paste
You can also have several open files simultaneously, and "pipe" commands into it. For example, press Ctrl-P and at the prompt enter:
cat yourfile
and it will insert yourfile at the position of the cursor. This way the full power of the bash commands are at your disposal ( use grep to get only specific parts of the file inserted ).
4I 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.
4As I just noted in another answer, you're looking for TUI (Text-based User Interface) text editors that adhere to the CUA (Common User Access) conventions. See the other answer for a full discussion. Then note that some (almost) CUA TUI text editors are still available as Linux/Unix TUI programs, including ones built upon Turbo Vision (which is close to, but not quite, CUA) such as SET's Editor.
1a quick scan in the web revealed: diakonos, nano and jed all are OpenSource
1Try micro editor:
Supports ctrl+c, ctrl+z and so on, plugins, commands, even mouse pointer selection and integrates into the OS clipboard.
Check out Ash:
It is exactly what the OP asked for; and also looks & feels more like Windows than any of the other editors mentioned here. And it has the same "windows like" key bindings like Shift+arrow/home/end/pgup/pgdown for selection, and Ctrl+C/X/V for copy cut paste...
Have you tried nano? The shortcuts are a bit different, but it's more "Windows"-y like vi and emacs.
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.
1fte (in many distributions as fte-terminal) is fairly CUA. Mad props to it for supporting mouse cursor movement even over ssh.
I just found the fiflo text editor.
Doesn't need any dependencies. Simple and lacks some features.
If you like good ol' WordStar commands, I can recommend JOE - Joe's Own Editor. It can be installed on Ubuntu and Debian with
sudo apt-get -y install joeJOE 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. [...] most of the basic editing keys are the same as in WordStar as is the overall feel of the editor. JOE also has some of the key bindings and many of the powerful features of EMACS.
This is exactly the situation why we at e10labs created CTE! You'll love this. .
Details:
Cᴛᴇ is a text editor for the Unix terminal, like nano and vi, but is better as there is no learning curve. It behaves like a modern application with mouse, menus and dialog boxes. This makes it like Linux Gedit, Kate, a web browser, Microsoft Notepad or Word. For example: To find some text one presses Ctrl-F and a dialog box appears.
Cᴛᴇ is distributed as a single binary, ready to run, with no dependencies, or a .deb or .rpm with the same. Cᴛᴇ is free for personal use.
2sudo apt install neif you do copying and pasting with the mouse, (select with left mouse button, copy with right button, insert at cursor with right button) then ne is pretty decent.
| cmd | shortcut |
|---|---|
| F1 | toggle menu bar |
| open | ctrl-o |
| save | ctrl-s |
| quit | ctrl-q |
| mark block | ctrl-b |
| cut | ctrl-x |
| find | ctrl-f |
| replace | ctrl-r |
