[natnat]

I'm pretty sure that Ubuntu, Debian, and Centos come with nano preinstalled. nano isn't nearly as powerful of an editor as emacs or vi, but it's got most of the basic features you'll need when you're just trying to get the network up and running, for instance. I'm not entirely convinced that, for an emacs user, the added power of vi over nano is worth it in the corner cases where you can't use emacs through SSH, considering how difficult an editor it is to learn.

[pointyhat]

I tend to just use vi for everything. Saves worrying about switching around all the time. Consistency over context-switching is more important to me.