How To Install nano on Debian 10

Learn how to install nano on Debian 10 with this tutorial. nano is small, friendly text editor inspired by Pico

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install nano on Debian 10.

What is nano

nano is:

GNU nano is an easy-to-use text editor originally designed as a replacement for Pico, the ncurses-based editor from the non-free mailer package Pine (itself now available under the Apache License as Alpine).

However, GNU nano also implements many features missing in Pico, including:

  • undo/redo
  • line numbering
  • syntax coloring
  • soft-wrapping of overlong lines
  • selecting text by holding Shift
  • interactive search and replace (with regular expression support)
  • a go-to line (and column) command
  • support for multiple file buffers
  • auto-indentation
  • tab completion of filenames and search terms
  • toggling features while running
  • and full internationalization support

There are three methods to install nano on Debian 10. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install nano Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install nano using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install nano

Install nano Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install nano using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install nano

Install nano Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install nano using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install nano

How To Uninstall nano on Debian 10

To uninstall only the nano package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove nano

Uninstall nano And Its Dependencies

To uninstall nano and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 10, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove nano

Remove nano Configurations and Data

To remove nano configuration and data from Debian 10 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge nano

Remove nano configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove nano configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge nano

Dependencies

nano have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install nano package on Debian 10 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.