Comment by setopt

Just FYI, they did try to improve that a bit. Release notes for nano v8.0:

> Command-line option --modernbindings (-/) makes ^Q quit, ^X cut, ^C copy, ^V paste, ^Z undo, ^Y redo, ^O open a file, ^W write a file, ^R replace, ^G find again, ^D find again backwards, ^A set the mark, ^T jump to a line, ^P show the position, and ^E execute.

> Above modern bindings are activated also when the name of nano's executable (or a symlink to it) starts with the letter "e".

So if you symlink nano to /usr/bin/editor and make it the default $EDITOR, then you now do get CUA-like bindings by default.

There’s still a lot of more things they perhaps should enable by default. I don’t know whether you’ve looked into .nanorc, but you can turn on stuff like syntax highlighting and line numbers, it’s just all off by default.

I don’t actually use nano myself, but I was really taken aback by how featureful it is when you look closely. Not st the level of Vim or Emacs, but more than expected. I basically stumbled upon someone on Reddit /r/unixporn that "riced" their nanorc and it piqued my curiosity.

For most people though, I think micro is a better fit than nano if you want a terminal CUA-style editor.