A Pico HowTo

Modern Linux distributions all come loaded with several text editors for both the CLI and the various desktops and window managers. While many users typically edit config files with GUI editors like Kate or KWrite, there are times when a GUI may not be available and you’ll be forced to use a command line editor such as Pico or vi. Or, like myself, you may just find it’s faster and easier to load up a terminal window and edit files with the CLI.

Pico has long been my favorite of the two, as it’s easily accessible and common commands are always displayed on the screen. While I also became familiar with vi, I quickly made sure I always had Pico available to make life easier, especially while I still considered myself a newbie.

Because I’ve been using it so long, and most commands are right there on the screen, I never had much need for a HowTo. However, after one of the members of the Tech Geeks mailing list wrote one, I surfed through it and picked up a few simple tips.

You can find Mark’s Pico Tutorial right here.

In my experience, many distros ship with vi as the default text editor. If you’d prefer to stick with Pico (or any other editor), simply change your EDITOR environment variable. This can be done with the following commands:

$ EDITOR=pico
$ export EDITOR

To make the change permanent, so it’s done every time you log in to your system, you’ll need to edit .profile or related files in your home directory, depending on which shell you prefer.