Linux Text Editors

I'm looking for a more capable text editor than the default that comes with Linux, and I come across an article from 2007 (!) by Sharon Machlis on the Computerworld website. (Computerworld?!? Are they still around? I guess so.) I made a comment, and since the article is so old I am afraid it might fall in black hole, I am reproducing it here. Enjoy. Or not.

Here it is 2011 and your article is the first useful one to pop up on this topic. Good on you for writing it. I'm still working my way through it, but I have a couple of comments already.

You mention this business of joining and splitting lines at least a couple of times. Methinks you acquired this obsession from too much exposure to some primitive word processor. As long as I have been using a keyboard I have always just used the delete key at the end of a line to join lines, and the enter key to split lines.

Emacs is just plain evil. People who use it are demented heretics. They should all be rounded up and sent to the Gulag. Oh wait, maybe that's where they are, and that's why they use it. It's all they have there. Poor peasants.