Thanks for the link, but how does one go about downloading and installing Nano? My only access to an EC2 Linux machine is via the command line, so there's no visiting the website, downloading and unzipping it. Am I really expected to visit that site from a windows box, view source on the download page, paste the url into an ssh session and do a wget just to get a copy of the source code? And then compile it before I can use it? Just so that I can edit text???
This is a fundamental thing I've never understood about Linux, and probably the reason I find it so painful. I can only assume there is something I'm missing. Any help would be much appreciated.
So... you're saying that the fundamental problem with Linux is that when logging in remotely from the command line it's not as easy to use as a GUI/Desktop environment?
I'd like to see you ssh into text-only Windows!
In any case, you find it hard because you don't understand it and I see no motivation on your part to spend any time trying to understand it. vi/vim is installed by default on most installs because vi has been a staple of using Unix systems for decades, it's part of the standard set of tools. And even if you just want to use it to edit text, I don't see any reason that you can't use it once you learn the basic commands:
* Esc or Ctrl-C to escape from Insert Mode
* i to enter Insert Mode
* :q from command mode to exit
Now you can use it to edit text files. Are you so hard up for keystrokes that you can't type an extra 1 or 2 in there somewhere? Are you just on some really slow connection or something? Sometimes I really don't understand people's resistance to anything that varies even slightly from what they deem to be 'normal.' Your argument against vim comes off to me like the people that will spend hours circling a parking lot so that they can park 8 ft. closer to the entrance to a store.
I seem to have put you on the defensive, and I apologize for having done so. You're mistaken that I don't want to learn, as evidenced by the fact that I'm here asking for help.
I do actually know how to use vi/vim, and have done so successfully for years. I just find it annoying that it behaves so differently from every other text editor that one comes across. Since this is an article stating that you can make vim behave like an IDE, I figured it would be a good place to ask if it were possible to make vim behave like an IDE in the text-editing sense. From what everybody is saying, it sounds like it's not possible.
Out of curiosity, how do you manage your remote servers if not via the command line? Do you have some sort of windowing environment set up on them that you access through a VNC client or similar? If it were possible to do away with the command line, I'd love to hear about it.
If you're running Linux on EC2 (or anywhere else for that matter), I strongly suggest you pick up an introductory Linux book. Any decent one will tell you about modeless editors like nano/pico, as well as introduce you to modal ones like Vim and emacs. It's not a huge investment of time and will probably spare you lots of headaches.
[root@domU-12-31-39-00-E8-E8 ~]# sudo yum install nano
Setting up Install Process
Setting up repositories
Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: updates-released
Error: Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: updates-released
That's pretty much what I get every time I try to install anything with yum. Are you saying that it can actually find and install software for you?
The only time it ever worked for me was installing Mono. I just assumed that there were very few software packages that it worked for and that you had to hand-install the rest.
Is there an easy way to teach it how to find stuff? If so, that would be great news.
You're missing that a minimal headless environment is always going to be more painful than a full desktop.
Also, I suspect you're also missing that linux has package managers that will find, download, (possibly compile) and install packages for you. It depends on the distro, but if you're running a Debian derivative, 'apt-get install whatever-you-want' would find, download, and install it for you.
As I mentioned above, those package managers (apt-get & yum) have never actually worked in my experience. After a dozen failed attempts to install anything with any of them, I had just assumed that they weren't intended to install anything other than a few well-known packages.
Any idea how to teach yum to actually find anything?
This is a fundamental thing I've never understood about Linux, and probably the reason I find it so painful. I can only assume there is something I'm missing. Any help would be much appreciated.