Comparizon between text editors in Ubuntu: Vim vs. Emacs vs. Nano
I love Vim. It's so powerful and effective and perfect in every way. However, most of the time I just use gedit, because I'm not as powerful and effective as Vim.
Nano is the easiest to use and learn. A lot of people will swear by Vim and Emacs but Nano is a very good text editor. Nano is good for editing a config file but if you are going to program you'll be better off using Vim or Emacs. Nano supports highlighting. But this is very subjective.
Everyone is going to have their favorite editors for some reason. Find the one that you like the best and use it.
Vim can be found on virtually any Linux system, including your embedded devices. It's also very powerful (once you've learned how to use it).