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Add to SafariWhen comparing nano vs pico, the Slant community recommends nano for most people. In the question“What are the best terminal text editors?” nano is ranked 8th while pico is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose nano is:
Nano includes only the bare minimum of functionality needed to edit documents making it very simple.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to use
Nano includes only the bare minimum of functionality needed to edit documents making it very simple.
Pro Built-in cheat sheet for shortcuts
Shortcuts for common commands are shown at the bottom of the editor.
Pro Available on almost every Linux system as default
Similar to vi (vim), you can find nano on most Unix-like systems (even on Cygwin).
Pro Most of the languages supported
Syntax coloring is available for most of the programming language.
Pro Lightweight and bug free
Very stable editor that never hangs / leaks or crashes.
Pro Built-in cheat sheet for shortcuts
All command characters are shown at the bottom of the editor.
Pro Easy to use
Pico includes only the bare minimum of functionality needed to edit documents making it very simple.
Cons
Con Limited feature set
While nano is fine for writing blog posts or doing quick modifications, it's probably not suitable for programmers or someone who needs to work on an editor for an extensive period of time.
Con Uncommon keybindings
Nano uses a strange set of default keybindings, which is totally different than Vim, Emacs, VSCode and Sublime.
Con No way to override command characters
Characters such as ^D, ^T, ^L, etc will always be interpreted as commands and there's no way to write them in text.
Con Lacks some commonly expected functionality even for a basic editor
Pico lacks search and replace functionality as well as the ability to work work with multiple files at the same time.
