The default nano screen layout is as shown in Figure 1. The two main features that differ are the short-cut key combinations and the use of a mouse. Although not complicated or difficult to use, it is different than a GUI-based text editor such as gedit. Nano is a terminal-based command-line program. If for some reason it's not, use your favorite package manager to install nano. Nano is part of the standard Ubuntu installation, and should be on your system already. If you want to learn more advanced techniques such as the use of multiple buffers or syntax highlighting of code, see the the nano project's documentation. Nano can be used in a terminal window or at the system console.īasic use of nano is covered here. Pico is the terminal-based editor used in the Pine email suite from the University of Washington. It was originally created as a free replacement for the non-free Pico editor. Nano is ideal for making small changes to existing configuration files or for writing short plain text files.

Though not as powerful as Emacs or Vim, it is easy to learn and use. GNU nano is a simple terminal-based text editor.

Mac edit text file in terminal