If you are serious about computing (and bio-computing, informatics, etc.), it is essential to learn a text editor. There are tons of options but a few of the standards include emacs and vim. At various points, I have and continue to use both. On clusters and other servers you are sure to have one or both available, so knowing these text editors can be helpful even if you are just interacting with those machines. My vim page is here.

Installing in ubuntu

I find that the emacs-snapshot is the best option for me for ubuntu. You can customize your startup by editing Lisp in the ~/.emacs file. I use a very simple startup file:

;; disable splash screen
(custom-set-variables
;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom.
;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
'(inhibit-startup-screen t))
;; current buffer name in title bar
(setq frame-title-format "%b")
;; disable toolbar
(tool-bar-mode -1)
(custom-set-faces
;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
'(default ((t (:inherit nil :stipple nil :background "white" :foreground "black" :inverse-video nil :box nil :strike-through nil :overline nil :underline nil :slant normal :weight normal :height 70 :width normal :foundry "unknown" :family "DejaVu Sans Mono")))))

Some basic commands

There are so many sites with emacs basic commands that I won’t repeat them here, but google is your friend.