Unit 3: Text Editors using Ubuntu Server

This week in class I got to play around with vi and nano on my virtual Ubuntu Server. I have to admit, the vitutor is a bit overwhelming. It is seven lessons long and after a while you begin to forget previous lessons because of the lesson length. After I finished adventuring in the exciting tutorials I searched on Google for a cheat sheet.(Click here if you would like to see cheat sheet) I know I will not remember most of the terms so I wanted a quick reference guide. Here is the one I came up with.

We were asked to change two documents in the system and I decided if I spent over an hour doing the vi tutorial I should probably use it to do the changes in one. We were told to edit the sources.list file. In the file I needed to delete hash marks and spaces that made it possible for the partner repository to be available. After all of the time I spend learning vi all I need to do was place my cursor above the hash marks and spaces and press the x button. The only part that got confusing was when it was time to save. I mixed up force quitting with quitting and saving. So when I went back into vi I had to redo everything and now I got an error when I tried to quit and save. I has to use the manual save command :w and then I was able to quit with no problem.

In the nano text editor I was asked to add a few lines to the .bashrc system file. Nano is a super simple text editor and I had no problem at all using the arrow keys to move to the bottom of the file and add two line of code that created an alias that tells the system when I type ls or dir to printed out both the regular files and the hidden ones.

For the current assignments neither of the text editors were very hard to use. I

stick with the belief that whatever software gets the job done quicker is the one I prefer to use. I can see vi being faster in the case of manipulating already existent files of code, but to creating something from scratch I definitely think for me personally the nano text editor would be my choice.