To get Nexus Repository Manager 2 running so you can use it with Maven, you need to run through a few steps before you install the repository manager itself.

• Download and install the Oracle JRE, version 7 or newer (suggest using version 8, because, duh). It can be obtained at the following link: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
• Download Apache Maven from the following link: http://maven.apache.org/download.cgi
• Download Nexus Repository Manager 2 from the following link: https://www.sonatype.com/download-oss-sonatype

Once you've done this, you should be ready to move on and install Repository Manager itself.

Once you've met the prerequisites for installing Nexus Repository Manager 3, you'll need to follow a few steps to get it running on Linux.

• Open a terminal
• Copy the package to a sane place sudo cp nexus-3.1.0-04-unix.tar.gz /usr/local
• cd /usr/local
• Untar the Nexus Repository Manager package via a similar command: sudo tar xvzf nexus-3.1.0-04-unix.tar.gz
• Create a symlink for ease of use sudo ln -s nexus-3.1.0-04 nexus

Once you've done these steps you can run Nexus Repository Manager via the following command

./bin/nexus run

You should see a lot of logs come up, and you should be able to access Nexus Repository Manager via the following URL: http://localhost:8081

Voila!

Once you've met the prerequisites for installing Nexus Repository Manager 3, you'll need to follow a few steps to get it running on Windows.

• Unzip the package, e.g. 7za.exe e nexus-3.1.0-04-win64.zip
• Copy the package to a sane place, likely C:\nexus

Assuming you are using the command prompt and in the C:\nexus (or whatever directory you chose), once you've done these steps you can run Nexus Repository Manager via the following commands

• cd bin
• nexus.bat

You should see a lot of logs come up, and you should be able to access Nexus Repository Manager via the following URL: http://localhost:8081

Voila!