pico: It’s in there too, it’s just also hiding

A long time ago I mentioned pilot, the primitive file manager that comes with the alpine (and recent re-alpine rendition) mail client.

I didn’t see where I had mentioned pico though, which worried me for a second, and sent me off to DuckDuckGo to try and find where I had left it.

It wasn’t hiding though; I actually did mention pilot without making the logical jump to pico.

pico is probably giving nano users a vicious case of deja-vu right now, because the layout and controls seem so very similar.

And I give it that: It does mirror what most GNU/Linux users will remember as their earliest (?) run-ins with text-based text editors.

The Debian package page for pico insists it is not quite as powerful as nano, although I’m not sure how they came by that conclusion. Perhaps some features are missing that I can’t see from a cursory use.

Regardless, it means if you install alpine (or re-alpine), you’re getting not only a file manager in pilot, but a text editor in pico too. How much would you pay for all this? Wait, don’t answer yet. …

You might also be able install it individually in your distro; There is an AUR package and a Debian splitaway package for pico too..

Of course, the real pleasure in knowing that pico is on hand, is seeing the humor in something like this:

Enjoy.