text editing in ubuntu

[Chris Jones]

> vim rocks.  Make sure to install complete vim and not only vim-tiny. 
> Then run vimtutor. Take you maybe 20 minutes to work over but well worth 
> the time invested.

Sorry - have to step in here. In my opinion vim is the last editor I 
would recommend to anyone, least of all a newbie. Its interface is so 
(IMHO) terribly confusing.

Stay away from vim as far as you can is my advice ...

As others had said, gedit (with word wrap enabled) probably fits your 
use case best. ( Personally I favour emacs, but again that has a bit of 
a learning curve and I would not recommend it to a newbie... )

Chris