Change the Default Terminal Editor in Debian

| debian | linux | tui |

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
The output of this command is shown below. You will see a list of all of your editors that you currently have installed and will be asked to make a choice.
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:

Behind the scenes you can see that all this does it updates the symbolic links.
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
There are many other things that can be configured this way. For more information reading the man page for update-alternatives is worthwhile.

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Veganism and Moral Intuitions

Inspecting some ethical claims, in the hope you might revisit some of your own intuitions

via The Map is Mostly Water June 24, 2026

Adversarial Communication

“AI” turns every conversation into a fight, because fighting is what they are good at.

via Deciphering Glyph June 23, 2026

The MacCharlie Method

I keep thinking about MacCharlie, this strange product from 1985 that turned the original Macintosh into a dual-purpose machine that could also run software by its chief competitor, early PCs: I’m fascinated by it because it almost feels like cargo culting...

via Unsung June 23, 2026

Generated by openring