GNU nano, commonly referred to as just nano, is another command-line editor that is present by default on most Linux installations. As the name might suggest, it is part of the GNU project, no different than many other parts that make up a Linux distribution (remember, Bash is also GNU project software). Nano was first released in 1999, with the intention of replacing the Pico text editor, a simple text editor created for Unix systems.

Nano is much more than a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) tool, definitely when compared to Vim. Similar to Notepad and Word, nano does not use different modes; it's always ready to start typing your documents or scripts.

On your virtual machine, open a nano editor screen:

$ nano

A screen similar to the following should come up:

Feel free to start typing something. It should look something like the following:

As you can see, the bottom of the screen is reserved for presenting what nano calls control keys. While it might not be obvious at first, the ^ is shorthand for Ctrl. If you want to exit, you hold down Ctrl and press X:

You will be prompted whether you'd like to exit with or without saving your file. In this case, we press Y for Yes. If we started nano with a filename, the save and exit would be completed right away, but because we started nano without a filename, another choice will be presented to us:

Enter a filename and press Enter. You will be back in your previous Terminal screen, in the directory where you started nano. If everything went well, you can see the file with the following command:

$ ls -l

While nano has more advanced features, for basic usage we have discussed the most important features. While it's initially easier to use than Vim, it's also not as powerful. Simply said, nano is simple, Vim is powerful.

If you do not have any experience and/or preference, our recommendation would be to spend a little bit of time learning Vim and stick with it. After spending more time with Linux and Bash scripting, the advanced features of Vim become hard to live without. However, if you can't get used to Vim, don't be ashamed to use nano: it's a fine editor that will get most jobs done without too much hassle!