Change the Default Terminal Editor in Debian
Debian comes with a very handy utility called update-alternatives that helps to set default tools for various tasks.
It is possible for several programs fulfilling the same or similar functions to be installed on a single system at the same time. For example, many systems have several text editors installed at once. This gives choice to the users of a system, allowing each to use a different editor, if desired, but makes it difficult for a program to make a good choice for an editor to invoke if the user has not specified a particular preference.On Linode, it seems that the default editor is nano, I prefer to use vim for editing git commits, visudo, and other things that use the default editor which is symbolically linked through
/usr/bin/editor.
The update-alternatives package basically changes the symbolic links for you. In order to change your default editor, you simply need to run the following command:
sudo update-alternatives --config editor
There are 3 choices for the alternative editor (providing /usr/bin/editor).Selection Path Priority Status
0 /bin/nano 40 auto mode 1 /bin/nano 40 manual mode 2 /usr/bin/vim.basic 30 manual mode
- 3 /usr/bin/vim.tiny 10 manual mode
Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:
levlaz@dev:~$ ls -al /usr/bin/editor lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Feb 10 20:49 /usr/bin/editor -> /etc/alternatives/editor levlaz@dev:~$ ls -al /etc/alternatives/editor lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Apr 28 18:56 /etc/alternatives/editor -> /usr/bin/vim.tiny
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on mastodon or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- Dagger Feels Like Magic
- Setting up ANTLR4 on Windows
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- 20 Years of Ubuntu
- видно по глазам - you can see it in the eyes
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Serendipity from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
- Andrea Veri: GNOME Infrastructure migration to AWS from Planet GNOME
- A Whale of a Time from https://popagandhi.com/
- Pluralistic: You should be using an RSS reader (16 Oct 2024) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Sahil Dhiman: 25, A Quarter of a Century Later from Planet Debian
- Reflections on Palantir from Nabeel S. Qureshi
- Reading Old Posts from Kev Quirk
- Capture less than you create from David Heinemeier Hansson
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Script Doctoring
I’ve been having a number of communications problems in my interactions with my doctors at Kaiser lately, and it’s becoming one of those things where the burden and onus entirely is placed upon me to sort out, and that’s exhausting for the actually autist…
via Bix Dot Blog October 22, 2024Blockchain company Forte acquires games studios, demands secrecy, shuts them down
Sometime in 2023, blockchain firm Forte acquired game studios Phoenix Labs and Rumble Games. However, it would be a year before this came to light, because according to a report from Game Developer, Forte demanded secrecy from employ…
via Web3 is Going Just Great October 22, 2024Initial explorations of Anthropic's new Computer Use capability
Two big announcements from Anthropic today: a new Claude 3.5 Sonnet model and a new API mode that they are calling computer use. (They also pre-announced Haiku 3.5, but that's not available yet so I'm ignoring it until I can try it out myself.) Comp…
via Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries October 22, 2024Generated by openring