Question

How to update nano in Ubuntu

My droplet is running Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS, and seems to be stuck at nano version 4.8 even though the newest version is 6.0. Running apt upgrade doesn’t update it, and neither does removing & reinstalling the package. Is there a way to update?


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KFSys
Site Moderator
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December 26, 2021
Accepted Answer

Hi @redtree,

If you want to update to the latest version of nano, you need to compile it from its source code, you can get its source code from

https://www.nano-editor.org/download.php

In this case, I’ll take

cd ~
wget https://www.nano-editor.org/dist/v6/nano-6.0.tar.gz
tar -xf nano-6.0.tar.gz
cd nano-6.0

Run the configuration script, I apply the following compile option.

./configure --enable-utf8

You can see a complete list of options available by using help.

./configure --help

Now to compile it

make
sudo make install

Don’t forger that you need to remove nano with apt remove before starting the above.

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