In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nano Text Editor on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Nano comes with many powerful features and allows you to edit and create various files on your computer or server. It includes all the basic functionality same as other text editors such as UTF-8 encoding, syntax highlighting, search and replace with regular expression support, multiple buffers, spellchecking, and more.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the Nano Text Editor on CentOS 8.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 8.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install Nano Text Editor on CentOS 8
Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.
sudo dnf install epel-release sudo dnf update
Step 2. Installing Nano Text Editor on CentOS 8.
Now we run the following commands to install the Nano text editor on the CentOS system:
sudo dnf install nano
Step 3. Using the Nano Text Editor.
In this part, you are going to tips on how to open and close files. Also, a way to search and replace text. Then, we’ll exhibit you some editing hints and different user-friendly commands that you could use in Nano textual content editor:
The main syntax to open Nano and to edit a certain file is:
nano idroot.txt
To search in the text, press CTRL + W. Insert your value and press Enter. To continue searching for the same text string, use ALT + W.
We have compiled the most useful commands to help you utilize the Nano text editor more effectively:
| Command | Explanation |
| CTRL + A | Let’s jump to the beginning of the line. |
| CTRL + E | Let’s you jump to the end of the line. |
| CTRL + Y | Scrolls page down. |
| CTRL + V | Scrolls page up. |
| CTRL + G | A Help window will pop out and show you all the available commands. |
| CTRL + O | To save the file. Nano will ask you to edit or verify the desired file name. |
| CTRL + W | Search for a specified phrase in your text. Press ALT + W to search for the same phrase again. |
| CTRL + K | It cuts the entire selected line to the cut buffer (similar to the clipboard). |
| CTRL + U | To paste the text from the cut buffer into the selected line. |
| CTRL + J | Justifies the current paragraph. |
| CTRL + C | Shows the current cursor position in the text (line/column/character). |
| CTRL + R | Opens a file and inserts it at the current cursor position. |
| CTRL + X | To exit Nano text editor. It prompts a save request if you made any changes to the file. |
| CTRL + \ | Replaces string or a regular expression. |
| CTRL + T | Invokes the spell checker, if available. |
| CTRL + _ | Let’s you go to the specified line and column number. |
| ALT + A | To select text. You can combine this command with CTRL + K to cut a specific part of the text to the cut buffer. |
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Nano. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Nano Text Editor on your CentOS 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Nano website.
