UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Is pico editor not availible on all versions of Unix? I do have vi and emacs, but pico just give me a response of "not found".

It's definitely not installed by default on most *nix systems. You can probably download it for your dist. (which is?)

vi is the de-facto standard - you are pretty much guaranteed to find it on all UNIX versions. Emacs can be found on most modern flavours, especially Linux. pico/nano will not be found on all UNIX versions. If you're running Linux, you should be able to install it relatively easily from your installation media (or download the latest version).

Personally, I'd say use vi

Cheers
ZB

I'd vote for vi as well. Emacs might be popular, but I find its commands not as easy to rem, as they are on vi.

My personal useage, is usually across the network. I use vim to configure systems many miles away. I can simply SSH into a box, load vi, edit configuration files and I also use it to collaborate with an Author friend, while she writes her novels. We add in the Vim/Latex plug-ins, and I edit the books as if they were local.
Vim with all the available plug-ins, filters add alot more power to this tiny app.
Learning the commands are simple, and they make sense.
Once you learn vi/vim you'll soon be executing vi/vim commands in your GUI editors by habit, and you'll find it much more powerful in certain aspects, than other editors.

Thanks for the help all. Sorry for the dumb questions. Just took a new job with a wireless carrier, and the cell controllers are UNIX based systems. All my current experience is with Windows, once upon time years ago DOS, which reminds a little of UNIX

So I have been thrown into the fire without any real help other than trial and error, mostly error, and trying to tech myself. UNIX appears to me archaic or very labor intensive like DOS. Not trying to be critical, just a newbie observation.

Heck we do not even have a administrator, all the software is controlled by Motorola. We only have one user for everybody, something seems very wrong, I just do not know enough to ask the right questions.