In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nano on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, GNU Nano is a free, open-source command-line text editor for Unix-like operating systems. It was designed to be an easy-to-use replacement for the Pico text editor. Nano 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 Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint or elementary OS.
- 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 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
Step 2. Installing Nano on Ubuntu 20.04.
To install Nano text editor on the Ubuntu system, execute the following command:
sudo apt install nano
You can check whether nano is installed or not issue the below command:
$ nano --version GNU nano, version 4.9 (C) 1999-2011, 2013-2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc. (C) 2014-2020 the contributors to nano Email: nano@nano-editor.org Web: https://nano-editor.org/ Compiled options: --disable-libmagic --enable-utf8
Step 3. How to Use 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 you 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 the Nano text editor on your Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official GNU Nano website.
