Well, with patience and some time I was able to compile pico, and am happy to report that it works just fine. I wiped out the other binaries and moved it to /bin (I compiled on my SD card for ext2 purposes). For anyone else, make sure its on an ext2 mount and use ./build slx
I think maybe I will tackle tcpdump and libpcap over christmas break.
EDIT: I only use pico for simple text editing, when I don't want to do anything but get in, change something and be done. Otherwise I would use something more robust like vim or nano.