mc (midnight commander) has a built in editor that is actually pretty great. "mcedit" if you have mc installed.
That's a nice alternative. Never thought of that. On most machines I have mc already installed so it's a real package installable alternative (unlike micro).
This is a pretty open ended question. Alternatives include everything from vi/vim, ed, emacs, to pico (and probably some I have forgotten..)
If you would read between lines (of a single line), I meant those ones that aren't vim or emacs related clones.
Vim and emacs are huge, powerful texteditors that aren't competing with nano. Ed is...unusable in 2018. So just pico.
(ed was unusable in 1988)
:-)
Alternatives as in "easy-to-use no-hassles console editor"? JOE brings more features and it even comes with a nano (actually pico) mode accessible with the jpico command. Ne comes with macros and it uses standard keybindings (C-s,c,v,z...). Both predate nano and are the repos of most distros.
vim?
Hallelujah
micro
Question could be considered flamebait. Ahhh, the good times... editor wars on usenet.