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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Micro - not quite as fancy as Helix but it’s a static binary, bells and whistles included, and ready to go without config. If you’re still using nano/pico, micro is a nice step up in functionality without the complexity of vim et al.
Multiple cursors, splits and tabs, mouse support, syntax highlighting, keyboard shortcuts that are more noob-friendly / familiar, it’s great.
I don't know why Micro hasn't completely replaced Nano in the Linux world.
Wait, yes I do.
Despite believing it to be better in every way, my dumb fingers keep automatically reaching for the Nano keyboard shortcuts.
You know what the key combo is to copy a selection of text in Micro?
Ctrl C, why would it ever be anything else?
You know what the key combo is to copy a selection of text in Nano?
Fucking shift, alt, 6.
6!!
And then Ctrl U to paste. I hate that I'm used to that.
Never heard of that key combo in nano before, I've always used ctrl-K (which actually cuts, then I have to paste it back again if I want to leave that text in place).
[Edit] Looks like you only need to hit alt-6, not shift-alt-6, to copy a full line or whatever text has been highlighted.
Vim users:
y
Helix. A perfect programmer's editor you can use with almost no config.
Interesting. Have you spent any time with neovim? If so, I'm curious how they compare. I was just starting to investigate the nvim ecosystem, but it's quite daunting. Still, I like the idea of everything being open source, and using plugins to augment my workflow.
Helix was inspired by neovim. Though mostly the inbuilt LSP/tree sitter support. Its keybindings are a mix between what neovim has and kakoune, though closer to kakoune I think. The major advantage IMO that helix has over neovim is built in support for most things you need plugins for in neovim as well as sane defaults out the box. You don't need 10s of plugins and 100s of lines of config to get helix to work like a modern editor - it just does out the box. All you need to do is install the LSP server for the languages you are interested in and launch helix.
The major downside ATM is it has no plugin support at all. Which is not as bad as it sounds as it includes so much out the box that you would typically require plugins for in neovim. They are working on plugin support though so it is only a matter of time for this to be fixed. Currently I don't feel the need for any plugins when using it so IMO it is not a deal breaker for me or my workflow. But the need to manage large configs and sets of plugins had already become too cumbersome in neovim for my liking.
I thought lack of plugins was going to be a deal breaker and now I’m kind of on the “do we really need plugins at all” side.
Helix out of the box is really nice.
I agree. I think the fact that it’s built around multi cursor edition and a selection -> action paradigm as opposed to vim’s action -> selection is going to become the norm slowly and surely.
Kate. Its such a brilliant foundation.
I currently have no idea of how to do it but in theory you can add any languages autocomplete, as well as huge libraries of auto-text (like in VSCode, templates for code stuff).
And its fast, unlike stupid electron VSCodium
Yes! It is beautiful and easy to work with, very much my tool of choice for coding.
I'm a new Kate convert. I had some issue on my system where GTK apps would break under Nvidia, something to do with font rendering. I tried Kate and was like "cool it works" and then I discovered how amazing and lightweight it is. Great editor.
Kate is my togo. With a terminal panel and latex->Unicode plugin is perfect for julia. I don't need it, but you can also set up its LSP client.
I also like Kate. I use it for Python, Html/css and some other stuff. I really like it since it's light and fast but full of features. Also integrates well with my desktop.
Haha ever used it on Windows? Damn thats weird
I use Pulsar for working on my many JavaScript projects. It's a FOSS, community-maintained replacement for the canceled Atom text editor.
Oh this is awesome! I really missed Atom and VSC just isn't the same.
Thank you for sharing!
Idk if it counts as less popular, but I always thought Sublime got too much flak. The popups are annoying, but other than that it's a great editor imo. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of something like VSCode or a full IDE, but that's also why I like it, it's much more snappy and lightweight. And you can still get things like LSP working so for me at least it gives me everything I look for in an editor. I even decided to pay for a license a few years back, considering I make my salary with this thing the cost is negligible.
I've been using Lapce for a bit and it's pretty cool, like VSCode but written in Rust. It's actually so much faster, like you press a key and there's instantly autocomplete suggestions and error warnings, so it feels a lot more responsive than VSCode. It also opens faster. There's still a couple weird things and missing functionality though because it's early in development so I'll probably go back to VSCode for now.
The original "ed" text editor, from 1969 Unix. Everyone should spend a few days trying to get some work done with it, if only to appreciate how we have nicer things now.
Another nice thing about ed is that it is sometimes easier to use than sed when you want to edit a file programmatically, since you can navigate lines at random (forward and backward directions), and you can still run regex find/replace like with sed. Just
printf 'i\nstring of ed commands\n.\n' | ed file-to-edit.txt
and pipe the commands into ed, although it is really an esoteric way to write scripts.
Geany. A real sleak, flexible and powerful editor.
You can use it to edit multiple lines simultaneously, perform extensive search/replace operations, etc.
It has plugins that can transform it from a humble notepad to a full IDE with code versioning support.
It often saves me from having to muck about with sed or awk in some tasks.
I came here to say geany. I love the speed, simplicity and power. Use it every day for coding and other text things.
Before I got around to learning vi, I spent a few years using joe, which seems to have fallen out of active development (the last release was in 2018). It's a terminal-based editor that bears some resemblance to old DOS editors.
I love Joe. And even though its last update was a while ago, it’s still my preferred editor.
I like xed for coding. Simple, costumisable enough, great experience.
I use it too, since I'm on Linux Mint. But only for simple stuff. I dont use it for anything more involved than simple bash scripts. Xed is nice, just wish it as a little more powerful
I am a huge Vim nerd, but I do a lot of copy-paste with one-off minor formatting in between. Sometimes Vim is more efficient at this, but often it really isn't and I'm quicker to use a dumb Notepad-like.
I've previously used Gedit in Gnome 2, Pluma which is MATE's equivalent, Xed which is Linux Mint's equivalent, and currently on Mousepad which is XFCE's equivalent. That's also mostly the history of my desktop environments over the last two decades.
Kwrite. I write a lot of text at work and I hate using word processors. I use this app for its excellent autocomplete feature. You type a word once and for next instances you can use tab to auto-complete. Very convenient.
I'll give you six that I haven't seen mentioned yet:
sim and vis, both of which focus on combining vim motions with structural regular expressions as used in...
sam and acme from Plan 9, both of which are included in Plan 9 from User Space (aka plan9port). sam also has a modified/expanded version in the form of deadpixi/sam, while acme has spin-offs like a port to Go and a standalone version.
mg, one of the three default text editors included with OpenBSD (the others being vi and ed).
sandy, the abandoned suckless text editor. It uses dmenu and is fun to mess with for shits and giggles.
I've been looking for a long time for a good alternative to sublime text.
however it's not really a text editor, it's more like a full IDE at this point, I really like lapce, it does have some bugs, but it's really lightweight and fast, and I like the UI a lot
I frequently use Howl
Distraction free, command autocompletion, Vim-like control is optional. I learned most of the commands by just opening the mini buffer (alt-x) then tab to watch the autocompletion list.
I like gedit. I like one or two of the built in themes. You can select a format on the bottom right (json, for example) and it'll highlight and change the color if certain things.
Gedit. It just works.
Edwin an Emacs-like editor programmed by some of the guys who maintain the MIT-Scheme programming language, which is (I think) the original implementation of the Scheme programming language developed by Gerald J. Sussman and Guy Steele (or a predecessor of it). To this day, MIT-Scheme continues to be one of the fastest Scheme implementations, producing extremely efficient binaries for a high-level language.
It is Emacs-like in nature, except instead of scripting it in Emacs Lisp, you use Scheme. Unlike Emacs, there are very few extensions available for it, so no Org-Mode, no Magit, no nice themes. The GUI version of it is so antiquated, it uses its own widget toolkit that is similar to the Athena Widget Toolkit.
Although I use Emacs for everything, I still love Edwin just because I like Scheme as a language better than Emacs Lisp. I wish I had more free time, I would like to help modernize Edwin. Although at this point it would probably easier to write a whole new Emacs-like editor using Guile Scheme instead, since there is a very active user community around Guile Scheme, especially among the Guix OS clique.
I wish gnome-builder had a better vim-mode, I would use it more often over VSCode.
Linux people seem to be obsessed with text editors. If I'm on windows I use notepad and on linux I use Kate or whatever the default is. What am I missing out on by not trying out different editors?
Linux users are more likely to be programmers and even if they aren't they often edit dotfiles (configuration) or write simple scripts to automate workflow. I also think Linux users just have a tendency to shop around until they settle on a favorite piece of software, even distro hopping is quite common.
Notepad is reeeally barebones, and that can be a good thing.
Check out Notepad++ if you ever need to work with text data more than just skimming a README file. You will see what these people mean.
Nothing really. Kate does a lot of stuff. If you’re not a software developer, it doesn’t really matter. Different text editors have differing levels of support for various programming languages and some people like all the key bindings so they don’t have to take their hands off the mouse.
But if you’re just editing plain text and you’re not a keyboard only kind of user, it doesn’t really matter.
What am I missing out on by not trying out different editors?
Linux and Unix systems have historically always been designed to be easily configured and controlled with human-readable text files. Most apps you use on Linux can be scripted. So the better you get at using every-day Linux/Unix apps, the more you might want to tweak them to make it easier for you to use. To do this, you need to learn a little bit about how to write configuration files, and how to write simple scripts. This also helps you to automate things on your computer more easily, since all applications can talk to all other applications using a human-readable programming language. For managing all of this, a good editor is extremely helpful.
When you take things to the extreme, you can start using Emacs, which contains an entire Lisp programming environment for manipulating text. You can replace all of your configuration and scripts with a single programming language (Emacs Lisp). And Emacs can replace almost every single app on your computer where text is involved, from simple scripting and configuration all the way up to web browsing, chat, and email.
I never understood why people liked Notepad++ so much. I always just used Notepad for simple text file editing and quick notes so I didn't see the point.
But I recently switched to POP!_OS and the text editor has lots of features Notepad doesn't have (such as line numbers, indentation, and I can select the (programming) language I am writing the document in) and I found myself really liking these features.
Haven't seen anyone mention the Zed Text Editor yet. It's only available on MacOS as of now, but I've tried it out a bit and once it's more mature (and available on other OSes), I might switch over from Sublime Text. It's got a similar speed as Sublime, but with LSP, vim emulation and collaboration features built in, whereas in Sublime I need to install packages to achieve the same. Also made by the same people who originally made Atom and Treesitter.
I also want to mention Onivim. Unfortunately, development has stopped, so it's not really a viable option anymore, but I loved the idea. The idea was to make a vscode/vim hybrid. To that extend, it's written in Reason which allowed them to support vscode extensions, thus they didn't have to create their own extension ecosystem, while still being faster than electron. As for the vim part, the entire editor could be controlled with a keyboard. They had a global shortcut to go into a "UI move mode" so to say, which allowed you to go to every single piece of UI you had on screen. Thus they were able to copy the vscode UI, but still be keyboard-only. It was a surprisingly effective idea, so I hope some people can revive it someday.