Post #540955

2026-03-05 18:07 UTC

micro enters the chat. Static, portable binary with no dependencies. Out of the box: Syntax highlighting Multi-line cursors like Sublime Text Mouse support Splits and tabs Diff gutter Copy and paste with system clipboard Cross-platform Sane key binds (ctrl-s, ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-z, ctrl-x, etc) Plugin system And much much more I have nothing to do with the project but this binary is the absolute best. curl or wget to any host and away you go with effectively a Sublime Text / VSCode like in the terminal. It’s baffling it’s not more well known and not installed by default on major distros.

Replies (4)

@bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 2026-03-05 18:13

That’s not a text editor, that’s an IDE.

Open ##540989
@0ops@piefed.zip 2026-03-05 18:24

I use nano because I can’t be assed to memorize key bindings, but I’ll give this a go

Open ##541085
@CodeMonkey@programming.dev 2026-03-05 18:52

How many Linux distros include micro in their minimal image? Vim, emacs, and nano are good because I can connect to just about any container or Linux VM and expect to have all of them available. Let’s say I have a test that always passes on my machine but fails in CI. If I can get a terminal on the test runner, I can open up my test code in vim, add extra logging and error handling, and rerun the test to check my fix. I am not going to install additional editors in a VM that will be recreated next time I push a code change. If I am setting up a development environment for long term use, I will install my favorite IDE and configuring all the bells and whistles.

Open ##541376
@MaggiWuerze@feddit.org 2026-03-05 20:54

If only I could get copy paste working when using micro over ssh. inside a document it works fine but I can’t get it to put stuff on my system clipboard

Open ##542376