I sometimes use vim from here:
http://www.fabiszewski.net/kindle-terminal/
and sometimes midnight commander (search on this forum). I just never liked nano for some reason.
Also, I've been able to chroot into Debian to get what I want but it is easier to just build a KUAL package with the files/libraries that are dependent on them. Look into some of the KUAL extensions that were made - most started with Debian or source from Debian.
Search and read, my friend, and you will find gold here! Good luck!