Creating, editing, and saving files on the BeagleBone Black

Now that you can log in and move easily between directories and see which files are in your directories, you'll want to be able to edit those files. To do this, you'll need a program that allows you to edit the characters in a file. If you are used to working in Microsoft Windows, you probably have used a program like Microsoft Notepad, Wordpad, or Word to do this. As you might imagine, these are not available in Linux. There are several choices, all of which are free. I am going to show you how to use an editor program called Emacs. Other possibilities are programs like nano, vi, vim, and gedit. Programmers have strong preferences about which editor to use, so if you already have a favorite, you can skip this section.

Prepare for lift off

If you want to use Emacs, then download and install Emacs by typing sudo apt-get install emacs.

Engage thrusters

Once installed, you can run Emacs simply by typing emacs filename, where filename...