There's no question that at some point you will have to work with text files. You'll have to edit them, change their contents, create new ones, etc. And for that, you need an editor.

The two most common ones used in Linux are vi and Emacs.

But there are alternatives that are very easy to use, you can just start using right away, such as nano and Gedit.

Whether you're a system administrator or a developer, you will have to edit text files, as well as to create them.

Graphical system administration applications can help you avoid working directly with text files, as [they] can integrate the development environments, however, it's far more flexible and often easier to just use a simple text editor.

For one thing, distributions differ in terms of what graphical administration utilities they have, but they all have the same basic editors and many of the same basic configuration files.

As with everything else, Linux has a lot of choices for how you do this.

Many of these will befamiliar if you've ever worked in any kind of UNIX type of system. The usual editors, that are used most often, are vi and emacs, and they are completely compatible with versions used on other operating systems.

These both have very long histories, they are always available on every Linux installation, though one will often not find emacs in a default installation.

This is a little bit of product of the silly, holy wars that have existed between emacs and vi lovers.

Each of these editors, vi and emacs, have a pure text-based form that runs perfectly well in a non-graphical environment, and they also have X-based graphical forms that would extend their capabilities.

One editor you can use from the command line is nano. It's very simple to use, it has virtually no learning curve, and it's much easier to get started with than either vi or emacs if you haven't used them before.

All you want to do is make a small change in a file and create a file. nano with a simple enough choice.

gedit, on GNOME-type systems and KWrite, on KDE desktop environments are also very simple graphical editors that require little or no learning curve, they're both extremely capable, and configurable, and can produce very pretty displays.

If you just want to create a file, without even doing an editor, there are two standard ways to just create one from the command line and fill it with content.

The first is to just use echo repeatedly:

This sort of game is often played from scripts.

A second way is to use cat combined with redirection:

either of which produces a file which has in it:

It is the most common text editor you will find on any Linux system.

vi is short for view.

The actual name of the program was probably vim, to which vi has been the alias to as its substitute name.

Even if you don't really want to use vi, you should gain familiarity with it.

There will be times when you have no other choice, it is on every system, and all your colleagues will probably be familiar with it.

There are graphical interfaces such as gvim and kvim, for new users, these may be easier to use at first.

Everything you do with vi, you do through the keyboard.

You do not have to use a mouse unless you're using a graphical version.

There's one confusing part about vi, is that there are two fundamental modes, command mode and insert mode, and you toggle between each with the escape key.

The same letter typed in either mode does very different functions, so it can be confusing to learn at first.