Cloning a github repo to ~/.emacs.d is how you can cart around your Emacs config. I've been doing this for years, and it works nicely. For things configured by files that live in the home folder directly (e.g., shell - and looks like Nano would be similar?), I've got another repo with a couple of install scripts that create symlinks to the version-controlled files. I don't love the extra steps, but I've found this works pretty well too.

Most of the time, I can manage without, but every now and again I've needed to do some thing or other, and I've been grateful to have my own preferred setup rather than somebody else's.