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Microsoft Linux

Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor For Linux (arstechnica.com) 58

Posted by BeauHD from the what-a-delight dept.
Microsoft has released a modern, open-source version of its classic MS-DOS Editor -- built with Rust and compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux. It's now simple called "Edit." Ars Technica reports: Aside from ease of use, Microsoft's main reason for creating the new version of Edit stems from a peculiar gap in modern Windows. "What motivated us to build Edit was the need for a default CLI text editor in 64-bit versions of Windows," writes [Christopher Nguyen, a product manager on Microsoft's Windows Terminal team] while referring to the command-line interface, or CLI. "32-bit versions of Windows ship with the MS-DOS editor, but 64-bit versions do not have a CLI editor installed inbox." [...]

Linux users can download Edit from the project's GitHub releases page or install it through an unofficial snap package. Oh, and if you're a fan of the vintage editor and crave a 16-bit text-mode for your retro machine that actually runs MS-DOS, you can download a copy on the Internet Archive. [...]

At 250KB, the new Edit maintains the lightweight philosophy of its predecessor while adding features the original couldn't dream of: Unicode support, regular expressions, and the ability to handle gigabyte-sized files. The original editor was limited to files smaller than 300KB depending on available conventional memory -- a constraint that seems quaint in an era of terabyte storage. But the web publication OMG! Ubuntu found that the modern Edit not only "works great on Ubuntu" but noted its speed when handling gigabyte-sized documents.

Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor For Linux More | Reply

Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor For Linux

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  • Thank you. How about a MASM64 for Windows, Linux and macOS?

    • Who even needs this? Just use edlin :-) (or tap two wires together to morse code out your file.)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by drnb ( 2434720 )

        Who even needs this?

        Linux and Mac developers. It allows better sharing of source code across platforms. Makes your code more compatible with Intel and AMD documentation and their code samples.

    • It appears there's no qbasic and no gorilla.bas or nibbles.bas.

      Useless.

  • Linux has plenty of text mode editors that run in a terminal or xterm or any X_terminal ed, mcedit is built in to midnight commander which is my favorite, nano, pico, vi, vim, Elvis, Jed, Joe, Jove, and I am sure there are others

    • Re:Why would a Linux user bother with it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2025 @07:55PM (#65473802)

      Well yeah, but this is intended for windows where a lot of old timers muscle memory is msedit.

      On the subject of good linux ones, check out "micro" if you get a chance. Its in a similar conceptual space as nano , simple editor, not really designed for big coding jobs, but great for quickly editing a config file or whatever, but its got a few modern affordances.Wordpress style command sequences, and works great with a mouse in a way nano never quite managed to pull off well. Sure I'll still use Emacs (and I suppose most folks would use vi) for bigger stuff, but its become my daily driver for quick config file edits on servers and stuff.

      • Er, word perfect command sequences I mean. ^C ^V ^X etc. Still waiting for that morning coffee to kick in, and this ridiculous website still hasn't got an edit button.

      • Well yeah, but this is intended for windows where a lot of old timers muscle memory is msedit.

        I find it hard to believe that anyone still has muscle memory from msedit.

    • If the claimed large file size support is actually good it could fill a niche.

  • edlin (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MessageDrivenBean ( 534518 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2025 @06:22PM (#65473584)
    Give me edlin back! Those were the days ...

    • Absolutely. I could pick right up with edlin like I never stopped. It was so handy for really quick edits.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You ain't lived until you've relied on ed, awk, and sed!

  • would anyone use this over vim, which is included with all Linux?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Lifetime Windows user here...

      I started vim once by accident on Mandrake Linux, and it was an obvious trap with no way out. I had to hit the reset button.

    • Re:Why (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2025 @06:45PM (#65473654)

      which is included with all Linux?

      The only Linux you've used are clearly mega distros. No there's countless of distros out there which don't have vim on them. On those universally GNU nano is the default installed text editor ... which incidentally is far more similar to Edit than Vi.

      • Re: universally GNU nano (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Are you sure you've used Linux?

        • Are you sure you've used Linux?

          I agree that there are tons of Linux distributions which don't include vi at all out of the box, and they do indeed default to using nano as the editor. I will follow this up by saying that this is an absolutely reasonable thing to do. Nobody who is not expecting to use a genuine glass terminal has a great reason to learn any vi variant today, unless they want to play nethack without using the number pad for movement and want to practice using vi keys. Nobody should ever find themselves in vi without knowin

        • Are you sure you've used Linux?

          Yes. In fact I have seven devices running Linux in this room and three of them are running a distro without vim packaged by default. Hint: Ever wonder why raspberry pi projects tell you to use nano to edit /boot/config.txt using nano? - Note this isn't a question it's an example framed as a question to hopefully make you realise there's more to the Linux world than you running Ubuntu desktop or whatever off the shelf common distro you seem to think is the only one which exists.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by allo ( 1728082 )

        Many don't preinstall vim, but most have some minimal version of vi. Minimal vi is still annoying if you're used to vim, but better than just having nano.

  • No, they did not. (Score:4)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2025 @06:33PM (#65473616)

    Microsoft did release the source code of Edit (written in C) but this is NOT the classic editor because it is total rewrite (in Rust) with no shared history with the C implementation. This thing is a different animal and it will have different bugs.

  • why? (Score:2)

    by guygo ( 894298 )

    the only thing that made EDIT look good was EDLIN.
    but my vote doesn't count... I was a TECO maven.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vbdasc ( 146051 )

      Now that TECO was mentioned, the last of the great old ones that remain unmentioned is QED on Berkeley timesharing system, the Ken Thompson's favorite editor, that was eventually ported to CTSS, Multics and GCOS/GECOS, and eventually morphed into ed for Unix.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vbdasc ( 146051 )

        Shame on me, I forgot the IBM family of editors, with the mighty XEDIT, and its modern incarnations like THE.

  • Is QBASIC also included or does the new EDIT not require it any longer?

    • Edit had a QBASIC dependency??

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by innocent_white_lamb ( 151825 )

        DOS edit is built into qbasic and it's not a stand-alone program.

        You can get to it by typing "edit" at the dos command line, or by typing "qbasic /edit" at the dos command line. They both do the same thing.

      • Yep, sure does.

      • Re:Also? (Score:4, Informative)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday June 24, 2025 @09:00PM (#65473904) Homepage Journal

        Edit had a QBASIC dependency??

        The DOS version did. The Windows 95 version didn't, because 95 didn't install with qbasic. (It would run fine if you copied it from DOS, though, and ofc especially if you dropped into DOS mode which was just actually DOS. Also wasn't it on the CD or something?
        (research occurs)
        yes, qbasic was on the Windows 95 A CD in other\oldmsdos.)

        • So are we supposed to pay for QBasic now?

          • I'd say you should go find a Windows 95 ISO or some DOS floppy images in one of the usual locations, I don't think Microsoft is going to come after you for running their old software they don't sell any more on their new software. Ironically though, it will probably run better in someone else's software (like dosbox) than under any solution they've ever sold or given away that is supposed to let you run it on modern Windows. I've heard that DOS doesn't run well in Hyper-V. I can confirm that Windows 95 is h

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by vbdasc ( 146051 )

            QB64 is free, open source, and much more modern version of QB that you can use. Not written in rust though, unless I missed something.

  • Articles like this always limit it to "for Linux" - but its just a general F/OSS piece of software which works on a number of platforms, including Windows itself, FreeBSD, and more.

  • Still going strong with community support for the past 31 years.
    So what is M$ bragging about now?

  • What Linux really needs is a native port of the MS-DOS prompt, complete the ability to select an arbitrary rectangle of text, copy-and-paste via context-menu, 8.3 filenames, 255-character path-length limits, and full support for executing all your favorite .BAT files.

  • We'll put it over there with all the others, because what Linux distributions need is another editor

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