What are the best Linux text editors?

Supported remote file editing protocols:Yes

Vi/vim exists on almost all Unix-like platforms. It's the de-facto Unix editor and is easily installed on Windows. All you need to make it work is a text-based connection, so it works well for remote machines with slow connections, or when you're too lazy to set up a VNC/Remote Desktop connection. See More

Top Pro

Extremely portable

Top Con

Poor feature discoverability

Though basic features like syntax checking, autocompletion, and file management are all available out of the box or with minimal configuration, this is not obvious to new users, who might get intimidated or assume they need to install complex plugins just so they can have this functionality. Other features new users might expect to find embedded in Vim, such as debugging, instead follow a UNIX-style model where they are called as external programs, the output of which might then be parsed by Vim so it can display results. Users not familiar with this paradigm will likely fault Vim for lacking those features as well. See More

EnergeticWerethekau's Experience

vi, not vim See More

Top Pro

Works in terminal over SSH

Unlike other editors such as Sublime Text, Vim is a command line editor and hence can be used in remote development environments like Chromebooks via SSH. See More

Top Con

Foreign keyboards have a hard time on Vim out of the box

A lot of frequently-used keybinds are way harder to access on foreign keyboards because they use different layouts. For example, Germans use the QWERTZ layout, while French use the AZERTY. See More

Elias Van Ootegem's Experience

Not just the best linux text editor. The best editor all round. I'd even argue Vim is an IDE: integrated debugging, code completion, searching, cross-file refactoring, lint checks, you name it; Vim does it. All while using less resources than its (non-free) alternatives, and having the extremely powerful modes and text objects. It takes some time to learn it, but it's time well spent. See More

Top Pro

Free and open-source software

Vim is open-source, GPL-compatible charityware. See More

Top Con

User must remember commands instead of point at them in a menu

Brenton Horne's Experience

It is everywhere, blazing fast and makes you more efficient. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight and fast

When compared to modern graphical editors like Atom and Brackets (which have underlying HTML5 engines, browsers, Node, etc.), Vim uses a sliver of the system's memory and it loads instantly, all the while delivering the same features. Vim is also faster than Emacs. See More

Top Con

Doesn't play nice with the system cut/paste mechanisms

This can be worked around if you disable mouse for insert mode. You can then right-click your terminal and use paste like you would anywhere else in a terminal. See More

CaringTlazolteotl's Experience

Years of programming and linux. See More

Top Pro

Excellent performance

As it loads the whole file into RAM, replacing all string occurrences in 100 MB+ files is quick and easy. Every other editor has sort of died during that. It is extremely fast even for cold start. Vim is light-weight and very compact. In terminal, it only uses a small amount of memory and anytime you invoke Vim, it's extremely fast. It's immediate, so much so you can't even notice any time lag. See More

Top Con

High effort to customize

Top Pro

Tons of plugins/add-ons

This makes Vim the definitive resource for every environment (Ruby/Rails, Python, C, etc.), or simply just provides more information in your view. See More

Top Con

Slow when opening files with very long lines

A lot of very long lines can make Vim take up to a minute to open files, where a few other editors take only seconds to load the same file. See More

Top Pro

Great productivity

Vim's keyset is mainly restricted to the alphanumeric keys and the escape key. This is an enduring relic of its teletype heritage, but has the effect of making most of Vim's functionality accessible without frequent awkward finger reaches. See More

Top Con

Consume brain energy for editing that should be used for logic

Text editing in vim is awesome, but it requires thinking about combination of commands. In other editors, you don't have to think about how to delete this part of code. You just think about how to implement a feature, what is a good design for this code. Even after you get used to using vim, it still requires your brain for editing. See More

Top Pro

Vimtutor

Vimtutor is an excellent interactive tutorial for people with no prior experience of Vim. It takes about 30 minutes to complete. See More

Top Con

Difficult to copy, paste, and delete

Top Pro

By default in Linux and Mac

At least an older version of Vi is installed on nearly every UNIX system See More

Top Con

Modal editing

Has a clean split between editing text (Insert Mode) and the other functions of the editor. See More

Top Pro

Can never outgrow it

The fact that very few, if any, people claim to be a "Vim Master" is a testament to the breadth and depth of Vim. There is always something new to learn - a new, perhaps more efficient, way to use it. This prevents Vim from ever feeling stale. It's always fresh. See More

Top Con

Unintuitive mode switching

Top Pro

Once learned, it's very hard to forget

Vim's somewhat steep learning curve is more than made up for once you've mastered a few basic concepts and learned the tricks that allow you to program faster with fewer cut/paste mistakes. See More

Top Con

Poor support for external tooling

Many plugins depend on optional Python and Lua features, which may or may not be included in whatever binaries are available for your system. And without platform-specific hacks, it is difficult for plugins to operate in the background or use external tooling. See More

Top Pro

Has been supported for a long time and will be supported for many years to come

Top Con

No smooth scrolling

Even with the GUI version, the lines jiggle line-by-line. If you are used to smooth scrolling, this is very annoying, especially when working with larger files. See More

Top Pro

Usable from a Terminal or with a GUI (GVim, MacVim)

If you happen to be logged into SSH, you can use Vim in a terminal. It can also run with a GUI too. See More

Top Con

Works poorly out of the box with right-to-left

Top Pro

Amazing extensibility

Vimscript provides a rich scripting functionality to build upon the core of Vim. When combined with things like Tim Pope's Pathogen plugin management system, it becomes easy to add support for syntax, debugging, build systems, git, and more. See More

Top Pro

Has multiple distinct editing modes

Interaction with Vim is centered around several "modes", where purpose and keybindings differ in each. Insert mode is for entering text. This mode most resembles traditional text entry in most editors. Normal mode (the default) is entered by hitting ESC and converts all keybindings to center around movement within the file, search, pane selection, etc. Command mode is entered by hitting ":" in Normal mode and allows you to execute Vim commands and scripts similar in fashion to a shell. Visual mode is for selecting lines, blocks, and characters of code. Those are the major modes, and several more exist depending on what one defines as a "mode" in Vim. See More

Top Pro

Productivity enhancing modal paradigm

As with all vi-like editors, Vim provides a modal paradigm for text editing and processing that provides a rich syntax and semantic model for composing succinct, powerful commands. While this requires some initial investment in learning how it works in order to take full advantage of its capabilities, it rewards the user well in the long run. This modal interface paradigm also lends itself surprisingly well to many other types of applications that can be controlled by vi-like keybindings, such as browsers, image viewers, media players, network clients (for email and other communication media), and window managers. Even shells (including zsh, tcsh, mksh, and bash, among others) come with vi-like keybinding features that can greatly enhance user comfort and efficiency when the user is familiar with the vi modal editing paradigm. See More

Top Pro

Vim encourages discipline

If you use Vim long enough, it will rewire your brain to be more efficient. See More

Top Pro

Everything is mnemonic

No need to memorize different key combinations for things like deleting the text inside of a block or deleting the text inside of a pair of quotes. It's just a series of actions, or nouns and verbs, or however you prefer to think about it. If you want to delete, you select "d"; if you want it to happen inside something, you select "i"; and if you want the surrounding double-quotes, just select ". But if you were changing the text, or copying it, or anything else, you'd still use the same "i" and ". This makes it very easy to remember a large number of different extremely useful commands, without the effort it takes to remember all of the Emacs "magic incantations", for example. See More

Top Pro

Works on Android

Top Pro

Asynchronous I/O support

Since Vim 8, Vim can exchange characters with background processes asynchronously. This avoids the problem of the text editor getting stuck when a plugin that had to communicate with a server was running. Now plugins can send and receive data from external scripts without forcing Vim to freeze. See More

Top Pro

Macros increase productivity

Many text editors have programmable macros, but since Vim is keyboard-based, your programmed macros are usually far more predictable and easier to understand. See More

Top Pro

Can set up keymapping

Top Pro

If you can use Vim you can also use vi

Top Pro

Built-in package management

Starting with Vim 8, a package manager has been built into Vim. The package manager helps keep track of installed plugins, their versions and also only loads the needed plugins on startup depending on the file type. See More

Top Pro

Donations and support to Vim.org helps children in Uganda through ICCF Holland

Top Pro

Flexible feature-set

Vim allows users to include many features found in IDEs and competing editors, but does not force them all on the user. This not only helps keep it lighter in weight than a lot of other options, but it also helps ensure that some unused features will not get in the way. See More

Top Pro

Vim understands what you're working on, and breaks it up into text object

Instead of an endless stream of characters, vim understands text, and allows you to navigate accordingly. Navigate through code by jumping to the next function block (]]), select an entire tag in markup (vat) - particularly useful when dealing with horrible SOAP API's... the list goes on and on. See More

From customizable shortcuts to a simple UI, it is just simple to use. See More

score 39 · Answer 2

Visual Studio Code

Top Pro

Easy to use

Top Con

Heavy-weight

ProudAnanke's Experience

good See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

Top Pro

Language Support

Visual Studio Code comes with out-of-the-box support for more than 30 programming languages, such as HTML, CSS, TypeScript, PHP, etc. See More

Top Con

Takes time to start

Can take a bit of time to start. If you just want to edit a file and close the app it can take more time compared with more lightweight editors. See More

opium's Experience

light and easy to use See More

Top Pro

Extendable

Lots of plugins are available. Additionally if it doesn't recognize a file type it will ask if you wish to install a plugin that helps with that. See More

Top Con

Memory hog

Allegedly, Visual Studio Code is "lightweight". Yet, running multiple instances of it at once, you may get many "out of memory" messages from Windows despite 16 GB RAM. (While of course also running other things. The point is the comparison with some other IDEs/editors where running them alongside the same number of other applications doesn't cause Windows to run out of memory) See More

Top Pro

Active development

It's really nice to see how the code editor evolves. Every month there is a new version with great communication of new features and changes. See More

Top Con

Slow

Even the repo list takes 5 minutes to load. See More

Top Pro

Embedded Git control

Visual Studio Code has integrated Git control, guaranteeing speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows. See More

Top Con

Generalized

Visual Studio Code is a general code/scripting IDE built to be lightweight and for people familiar with their language of choice, not directly comparable to Visual Studio in power or scope. See More

Top Pro

Great performance

For a 'wrapped' web-based application, Visual Studio Code performs very well. See More

Top Con

Embedded Git isn't powerful enough

You can do nothing but to track changes, stage them and commit. No history, visualization, rebasing or cherry-picking – these things are left to git console or external git client. See More

Top Pro

Integrated terminal

There's no need to press alt+tab to go to a terminal: it is directly integrated into the editor. Shift+~ is a handy hotkey to toggle the integrated terminal. See More

Top Con

Is not an IDE, is a text editor

Top Pro

Integrated debugging

VSC includes debugging tools for Node.js, TypeScript, and JavaScript. See More

Top Con

The autocomplete and code check is not as powerful as the one on WebStorm

Sometimes it doesn't tell you if you made a typo in a method name or if a method is not used and several other important features. See More

Top Pro

TypeScript integration

There is very solid TypeScript integration in Visual Studio Code. Both are developed by Microsoft and VSC itself is written in TypeScript. See More

Top Pro

Great Vim support from the VS Code team

This is the best Vim outside of Vim. They are also starting to add Neovim for ex commands. Their roadmap for the Vim extension is very extensive about every command and informative. See More

Top Pro

Libre/open source

Released under the MIT License. See More

Top Pro

Fast and powerful

VS-Code has the speed of Sublime and the power of WebStorm. Perhaps this is the best software that Microsoft has ever created. See More

Top Pro

JS typechecking

It leverages TypeScript compiler functionality to statically type check JS (type inference, JSDoc types) with "javascript.implicitProjectConfig.checkJs": true option. See More

Top Pro

Works flawlessly on major developers' platforms

VSCode manages to keep the same user experiences while developing on either Windows or Linux. See More

Top Pro

Custom snippets support

Snippets are templates that will insert text for you and adapt it to their context, and in VSC they are highly customizable. See More

Top Pro

Extendable through plugins

Visual Studio Code comes fairly complete out of the box, but there are many plugins available to extend its functionality. See More

Top Pro

JavaScript IntelliSense support

JavaScript IntelliSense allows Visual Studio Code to provide you with useful hints and auto-completion features while you code. See More

Kate's defaults are great and working with many languages in many files are supported brilliantly. Newer editors have been influenced by Kate. See More

score 12 · Answer 3

Kate

Top Pro

Great default settings and built in features

Top Con

Hard to install on Windows or OS X

Kate can be a little hard to install and configure, especially for beginners. On Linux or BSD, it can be easily installed from your distribution's repositories. See More

Specs

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP; HTTP; SSH; WebDAV

Collaborative editing:No

Editing is incredibly quick and stable. See More

Top Pro

Fast and stable native editor

Top Pro

Fast and minimaistic

Start-up is fast. See More

Top Pro

Syntax highlighting

Kate supports syntax highlighting for over 180 languages, from Assembler to Zsh. See More

Top Pro

Edit over FTP, SSH, or other protocols

Kate uses KDE's input and output libraries to read and write files, allowing seamless integration with FTP, SMB, SFTP, and many other protocols. See More

Top Pro

Integrated terminal

Has a terminal that can sync to the location of your document, letting you compile or run your program quickly or run quick commands, all without leaving the editor. See More

Top Pro

Project mode

Kate allows you to make projects to simplify the organisation of your code. This brings in additional organization of an IDE without the overhead. See More

Top Pro

Has a Vi entry mode

Sublime Text protects and copyrights its code and is thus not the freedom-ware some would like it to be. See More

score 25 · Answer 4

Sublime Text

Top Con

Proprietary

Top Pro

Lightweight

Sublime Text is very lightweight by default. Customization occurs on the fly thanks to Package Control. See More

Suraj Mandal's Experience

Fast even in low spec systems where running firefox+electron based text editor would lag like hell. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

License:Proprietary

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP (plug-in); SSH (plug-in)

Although paying for something good is far from a Con, having the competition this editor has and still having to pay for it is definitely a Con. See More

Top Con

Paid

Top Pro

Comfortable to work with

Sublime Text has a minimap on the side that provides a top-down view of the file and keyboard shortcuts for most actions. It also supports a large number of languages and general text editing features out of the box. See More

cosmo's Experience

ABSOLUTELY PROPRIETARY! There are so many secure, privacy-respecting, open-source alternatives that it's difficult to justify the use of this software as a programmer. See More

Top Con

Interruption while work

"Purchasing" messages box interrupts while saving file. See More

Top Pro

Has tons of plugins available

Almost all the popular mainstream plugins are available with sublime except the intelli-sense that comes with VS Code. See More

Top Con

Shareware

Many users tend to forget it, but it is a shareware, with a nag prompt reminding the user should pay for this software. It is not a problem (the company must have a source of income), but it is something to consider when most of the alternatives are free. See More

Top Pro

Consistent cross-platform

Sublime Text looks consistently the same across Windows, OS X, and Linux. See More

Top Con

Not a full IDE

It does not necessarily function on a project level See More

Top Pro

Very fast

Sublime is quick to start and never slows down. The UI is always responsive and you know what is happening in the background. See More

Top Con

No toolbar

Sublime Text is more focused on keyboard users, meaning it doesn't come with a tool bar. Even plugins can't toggle bookmarks using the mouse. See More

Top Pro

Beginner-friendly

When you start using Sublime Text, it doesn't drown you in keyboard shortcuts or non-intuitive use-concepts. However, high-level functionality can still be easily accessed when the need for it arises. See More

Top Con

Often crashes due to poor quality plugins

Some plugins are quite buggy, meaning that installing many can become quite a problem regarding stability. See More

Top Pro

Freemium

A Sublime license can be bought but it can still be used for free. However, a pop-up appears when you save multiple times. See More

Top Con

No printing of files

Sublime Texts offers no way of printing the files it edits. See More

Top Pro

Distraction free editing mode

Distraction free editing takes over your screen and removes every UI element so you can focus on code. See More

Top Con

Annoying whitespace management

All too often it does the wrong thing with indentation on otherwise blank lines. See More

Top Pro

Easy to get started

All you need to do when starting up is to install a package manager and modify user configuration. See More

Top Con

Inadequate language support

Sublime Text offers poor support for Far-East languages in Linux. See More

Top Pro

Multiple languages are supported

Top Pro

Fully customizable

Sublime Text allows for all sorts of customization to help users change almost everything in the editor: Key Bindings, Menus, Snippets, Macros, Completions, and many more. Essentially, just about everything in Sublime Text is customizable with simple JSON files. This system gives the user flexibility as settings can be specified on a per-file type and per-project basis. See More

Top Pro

Offers Command Palette

Command Palette allows for fuzzy searching all available settings, snippets, etc. See More

Top Pro

Customizable keymapping

From menus to commands, assign key maps to almost anything. See More

Top Pro

Portable settings

Settings are modular and can be shared. See More

Top Pro

Installable package manager

The package manager is a plugin and can be swapped with something else custom. See More

Top Pro

IDE features without the cruft

Sublime Text, while being lighter-weight than an IDE, still supports many IDE features. Text from the current file is used to provide autocomplete. Project Support (folder browsing, scoped history, build-system declarations). Refactoring support is emulated through multi-select, project-wide find and replace, and regular expression search. Syntax-aware selection and GoTo for quickly jumping to locations in the project. Snippets and Macros. A Python console for everything else. See More

Top Pro

Multi-line select and editing

Multiple cursors and column selection allows for versatile ways of editing. ctrl + d will select the current word and each time the command is repeated, it adds the next occurrence of the word to the selection. ctrl + click or middle-mouse click will place another cursor in the place that's clicked. Cursors can then be controlled together. This also permits selecting vertically. ctrl + shift + l will place a cursor on every highlighted line. See More

Top Pro

Functionality can be easily extended

Sublime Text uses TextMate's syntax declaration files to support new languages, it has all its menus and keybindings generated from JSON files, and it can be scripted to add new features using Python. If Sublime Text doesn't support a desired language or feature, it's usually not long before someone implements it themselves - examples include the plugin package manager and the 'open in browser' command. See More

Top Pro

Highly Theme-able

Create your own theme with online editor. See More

Top Pro

Regex commands

Regex commands help describe a certain amount of text. See More

Top Pro

Permits instant file switching

Open Goto Anything by pressing Ctrl or Command + P and by using fuzzy search you can look for a file in your project. The file will load even without pressing enter, so you can make sure you've found the correct file without committing. See More

Top Pro

Projects support multiple folders and git repos

Top Pro

Allows for Vim-style editing

Vintage mode is Vim-style editing that's already built into the text editor. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic Build System

Choose from many build systems or craft your own. See More

Top Pro

Haxe and OpenFL integration via plugin

Both of these programming interfaces are cross-platform, open source, and easy to use. See More

Top Pro

Support for TextMate themes and window decoration themes

Sublime Text compatibility with Textmate bundles is good, but excludes commands, which are incompatible. In general, Sublime Text syntax definitions are compatible with Textmate language files (.tmLanguage extension). See More

Top Pro

Direct server upload

Provides command line shortcut for server upload. See More

Top Pro

Functionalities

With lot of functionalities, where other editor even not think to provide. See More

Geany is very lightweight thanks to the smaller offering of features. See More

score 4 · Answer 5

Geany

Top Pro

Light and fast

Specs

Supported remote file editing protocols:None

For example, there is an easy way to change the font and theme in the View menu. No need to search through several syntax styles like in Notepad++ just to be able to change the used font. See More

Top Pro

Simple project management

Top Pro

Options in the menu are easy to find

Top Pro

Real syntax parsing (not just coloring)

Hence it is capable of showing the methods and inner classes of, e.g., a Java source file. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed Open Source

Which usually means it will remain free of charge. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Geany is a cross platform editor, very similar to Notepad++ in Windows. See More

Top Pro

Build in terminal

Press F5 and code will run without the need to switch between windows. See More

Top Pro

Built-in plugin manager

Geany has a built-in plugin manager which can be used to install plugins and add new, powerful features to the editor. See More

At the time of writing this, no equivalents to gVim exist. See More

score 9 · Answer 6

Neovim

Top Pro

Compatible with Vim plugins

Top Con

No graphical editor yet

Bustr Blu's Experience

I only used Neovim for a short time, and I knew it wouldn't replace Emacs as my goto "text editor", but it did leave me impressed. I wouldn't be surprised if Neovim replaces Vim as the most popular iteration of Vi in the future. From the little I've used of it, I'd say it's worthy of that position. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, Windows, macOS, *nix, Android

License:Apache

Supported remote file editing protocols:scp, ftp

Neovim supports installing of normal vim plugins, but some don't work, like color_coded. See More

Top Pro

Active development community

Top Con

Some vim plugins don't work

cosmo's Experience

Lighter, faster, and yet, more featureful than Vim, Neovim is the editor to end all editors. It's jam-packed with all the Vim goodness you've come to know and love in a heroically smaller footprint. It works with all of your old plugins and a load of new ones, enabling you to build the IDE of your dreams! See More

Top Pro

Comes with some good configurations out of the box

Some typical configurations most of VIM users make are default in Neovim. See More

Top Con

Why clone Vim

You can use Vim and plugins. See More

Top Pro

UI Agnostic

The core functionality is handled apart from the UI, meaning that Neovim can be embedded into any other GUI system, such as Atom. See More

Top Pro

Modern code base

As a refactor over Vim, Neovim has greatly improved its code base. For example, some functionality is handled by libuv, the same code base that powers Node.js. See More

Top Pro

Asynchronous support

Plugins have the ability to execute asynchronously. See More

Top Pro

Powerful plugin model

Vim plugins have always been useful, but tied to specific languages. Neovim's architecture provides better separation between plugins and the core product, so that plugins are completely flexible and can be written in any language. See More

Top Pro

Still Vim but with upgraded features and some issues fixed

NeoVim was a complete rewrite of Vim, with new features added and underlying issues resolved thanks to the Vim code base. The keybindings and configuration are the same as Vim, so the switch can be pretty simple. See More

Top Pro

Better integration with external tools

The core text editor is "headless", meaning it's detached from the user-interface so other programs can hook into it. This enables better integration with IDEs and browsers, where "Vim mode" has typically been a poor substitute because it was a partial rewrite or a partial port at best. One of the advantages of Vim has always been ubiquity and Neovim makes it even more ubiquitous. See More

Top Pro

Free, Libre, and Open Source

Write your code with complete peace of mind, knowing the codebase has been thoroughly audited by programmers much like yourself. Enjoy a sense of security and privacy not found with many other popular editors and IDEs. See More

Top Pro

Fast and light on memory usage

New neovim editor instance starts instantly and you can have multiple editors open at the same time, because id does not require a lot of memory to run. See More

Top Pro

Work in TUI (Tex User Interface)

Neovim can work on terminal, on a remote server over ssh. See More

Top Pro

Terminal mode is very convenient for testing code in a split window

Top Pro

Opens a 3Gig Text File in a few seconds

Not many editors can open such a large text file so quickly. See More

Top Pro

Built-in terminal emulator

This avoids the user having to make any installations. See More

Through its programmability, a very broad range of functionalities can be integrated in emacs, turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system. See More

score 16 · Answer 7

Emacs

Top Pro

Enormous range of functionalities (way beyond simple "text editing")

Top Con

Learning curve is long

While it's better than it used to be, with most functions being possible through the menu, Emacs is still quite a bit different from your standard editor. You'll need to learn new keyboard shortcuts. See More

Bustr Blu's Experience

It's an elisp engine disguised as a text editor, that's both timeless, and limitless. See More

Specs

Platforms:Unix-like, Windows

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP; HTTP; SSH; WebDAV

Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect (Emacs Lisp). A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include the practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the sublime (chess, Eliza). See More

Top Pro

Total customizability

Top Con

Takes a lot of effort to configure to fit your needs

It definitely can be configured (and even programmed) according to anyone's habits, needs and preferences. For example, imagine a text editor which can handle typesetting and displaying English, Russian, Japanese and Sanskrit text, supporting LaTeX publishing workflow, Common Lisp development workflow, Javascript development workflow, writing down thoughts and to-do tasks and also having a full-featured command line. But you will to configure/program it, and it'll in no way be either fast or pleasurable. See More

CapableNencatacoa's Experience

I think of simple editors for simple, quick, edits; but invariably those edits turn into nightmares; "how does regex work here...". Stay with what you know and Keyboard Macros FOREVER!!! See More

Top Pro

Free

Licensed under GNU GPL. See More

Top Con

Sometimes the extensibility can distract you from your actual work

If I ever want to lose half a day, I'll start by tweaking my .spacemacs config file. See More

CourteousMaximon's Experience

Works everywhere and with everything. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard-focused, mouse-free editing

Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. See More

Top Con

Chorded keyboard combinations can be baffling

For example, for navigation it uses the b, n, p, l keys. Which for some people may seem strange. But don't worry, you can change it. See More

Top Pro

Provides org-mode

Advanced planning and publication which can start as a simple list. See More

Top Con

A lot of jokes in this serious software

Top Pro

Lisp customizations

With lisp customization, any behavior of Emacs can be changed. Update with pre-release patch can be also applied without recompiling the whole Emacs. See More

Top Pro

Great documentation

With 30+ years of use the Emacs documentation is very thorough. There are also a lot of tutorials and guides written by third parties. See More

Top Pro

Has a server/client mode

Top Pro

Works in terminal or as a GUI application

You can use Emacs' command line interface or graphical user interface. See More

Top Pro

Self documenting

Emacs has extensive help support built-in as well as a tutorial accessed with C-h t. See More

Top Pro

It's also an IDE

You can debug, compile, manage files, integrate with version control systems, etc. All through the various plugins that can be installed. See More

Top Pro

(Almost) everything is implemented in Emacs Lisp. You are the limit.

Top Pro

Has been widely used for a long time

Top Pro

Ubiquity

Fully compliant GNU-emacs is available on many platforms, and they all understand .emacs configuration files. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Works on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, and others. See More

Top Pro

Rectangular cut and paste

Emacs can select rectangularly. See More

Top Pro

Mini buffer

You can pass complicated arguments in the mini buffer. See More

Top Pro

Support multi-line editing, multiple frame, powerful paren, crazy jumping style

Review the "Emacs Rocks" video. See More

Top Pro

Keybindings by name

Keyboard commands are easy to use with optimized keyboard layouts. See More

Top Pro

Interactive Shells

Emacs has a number of shell variants: ansi-term, shell, and eshell. See More

Top Pro

Integrates planning in your development process

You can jump straight from your org-mode files to programming tasks - and back - and build a seamless workflow. See More

Top Pro

Vi keybindings through Evil mode

Evil mode emulates vim behaviors within Emacs. It enables Vi users to move inside the Emacs universe. See More

Top Pro

GTK+ widgets support

Since version 25 you can run GTK widgets inside Emacs buffers. One of these is the WebKitGTK+, which allows the user to run a full-featured web browser inside Emacs with JavaScript and CSS support among other things. See More

Top Pro

Helm plugin adds even more power to Emacs

Powerful commands, search, and more with the Helm plugin. See More

Top Pro

dabbrev-expand (Alt-/)

Dynamic word completion. See More

Top Pro

Visual selection and text objects with Evil

Evil is an extensible vi layer for Emacs. It provides Vim features like Visual selection and text objects. See More

Due to its modular design, almost any aspect of the editor can be changed. Even seemingly core packages, like those taking care of search and replace functionality, can be forked on GitHub, and changed and replaced in the editor. The documentation for creating new plugins is also great, making it easier for developers to jump in and create plugins for Atom. See More

score 16 · Answer 8

Atom

Top Pro

Extendable

Top Con

Very slow startup time

Atom is very slow to startup, which is a big disadvantage if you are accustomed to using it to make quick changes on your files. See More

EnergeticWerethekau's Experience

best ux, but performance lags behind vscode See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux

License:MIT

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP (plug-in); SSH (plug-in)

Bracket Matching:Yes (plugin)

Atom is free, open source, and written in C++, LESS, and CoffeeScript. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Top Con

High memory usage

Atom has a relatively high memory usage, especially when compared to some other text editors not based on Electron. For those who develop on the go, this also tends to mean shorter battery life. See More

Daniel Gallegos's Experience

Atom is a very well designed text editor, but chokes consistently on larger files. Startup is slow compared to other text editors such as Sublime, along with using a lot of memory due to how it's built on Electron. See More

Top Pro

Modern feel and very customizable and extendable

Top Con

Slow

Atom is not a native application. As such performance is subpar and the lag is especially noticeable on larger projects. It also opens a surprising amount of sub-processes and leaks a considerable amount of memory. See More

UnbiasedAmunet's Experience

Works just as well as sublime text and it's free See More

Top Pro

Multiplatform

Atom can run on Mac, Windows, and Linux. See More

Top Con

Slows down exponentially with plugins

Extending it needs sacrificing responsiveness See More

Top Pro

Built-in package management

Atom was built from the ground up with the community in mind. Package management is therefore a first class feature. See More

Top Con

Has difficulty with large text files

Tends to crash or hang with large >(10MB) text files, making it less useful as a general text editor. See More

Top Pro

Extensive list of packages

Atom has a built-in package manager and an extensive list of packages. Packages are written in CoffeeScript. See More

Top Con

Bloated

Tries to be too many things for too many people. (non-native & cross-platform) See More

Top Pro

Themes

You can theme and customize Atom to your liking. See More

Top Con

Slower than VScode

Better stick with non Electron based TE for now, like gedit/sublime/nano/vim or in extreme cases Ultraedit, don't choose anything JS based. See More

Top Pro

Embedded Git control

Atom will highlight folders, files, and lines that have any uncommitted edits made. It also integrates really well with GitHub. See More

Top Con

Not known when a new window will open

It's not really clear why and when a new window is opened when you open a file out of the tree view. See More

Top Pro

Multi-line select and edit

Multiple cursors and column selection allow for versatile ways of editing. ctrl + d will select the current word and each time the command is repeated, it adds the next occurrence of the word to the selection. ctrl + click or middle-mouse click will place another cursor in the place that's clicked. Cursors can then be controlled together. This also allows for selecting vertically. See More

Top Con

No text UI

Top Pro

Beginner friendly

One of the goals of Atom is to be a text editor for both experienced and beginner programmers. You can add keyboard shortcuts, change themes, install plugins, and change core settings by clicking through a GUI, or by manually editing config files the old-fashioned way. It has the added advantage of being built using the same engine that powers Google Chrome, so actions like opening and closing tabs feel familiar, even to new or non-programmers. See More

Top Con

Missing additional touches

As Atom is still relatively new, it's missing nice little touches that other text editors have implemented over the years. From simple ease-of-use items like middle-mouse button multi-cursor select, to the ways pasted information from a spreadsheet is interpreted in multi-select situations. See More

Top Pro

Command Palette support

The Command Palette permits fuzzy searching all available functions, settings, snippets, etc. See More

Top Con

Depends on old software

Depends on python 2, which dies out. See More

Top Pro

Command line integration out of the box

Installing Atom adds two command line commands - atom and apm. The first one runs the application itself while the second is the Atom Package Manager that's used to add and remove various components from the package listing. While these features can be set up with other editors as well, Atom takes care of them out of the box. See More

Top Con

Doesn't recognize some keyboards

Top Pro

HiDPI support

Atom has built-in HiDPI support with zero scaling issues. See More

Top Con

Doesn't handle RTL (right-to-left text) well

Text can't be highlighted and manipulated properly, cursor isn't displayed visually according to where it is logically (you have to type to find out), and similar issues. See More

Top Pro

Allows for instant file switching

By pressing Ctrl or Command + T and using fuzzy search, you can look for a file in your project. See More

Top Pro

Node.js integration

The editor is built on top of Node. As such anything that can be done in Node can be done in the editor. See More

Top Pro

Vim plugin turns Atom into a modernized vim

Top Pro

Best support for Arduino with Platformio

Arduino is the most important platform for developing embedded systems. See More

It follows the UNIX philosophy by doing one thing well (text editing) and interfaces nicely with other CLI tools. See More

score 3 · Answer 9

Kakoune

Top Pro

Good UNIX citizen

Top Con

Small community

Top Pro

Text selection mechanism

Kakoune works on selections, which are oriented, inclusive range of characters, selections have an anchor and a cursor character. Most commands move both of them, except when extending selection where the anchor character stays fixed and the cursor one moves around. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed and supported

Top Pro

Very expressive

Kakoune provides a very expressive set of commands, including various objects selection (paragraph, blocks, words), alignment support, conditional selection filtering... This set of command is expressive enough to implement all the provided auto indentation logic. See More

Not bloated with millions of plugins and themes and stuff and very fast due to that. See More

score 6 · Answer 10

Gedit

Top Pro

Minimal

Top Con

Doesn't scale on HiDPI screens

Specs

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP; HTTP; SSH; WebDAV

Collaborative editing:plug-in

There are tons of plugins for productivity available in many different workflows, such as a dictation plugin, an encryption add-on, a whitespace remover, and more. See More

Top Pro

Plugins allow for added functionality and customization

Top Con

Confusing interface

For example, finding anything in the settings menu is hard. Most other text editors use Edit->Preferences for managing settings but this is not the case for Gedit. See More

Top Pro

Supports app menu bar when enforced to the desktop environment

If the desktop environment prefers the app menu bar ("File, Edit etc...) instead of showing everything in the title bar Gedit will respect this. It's one of few Gnome apps that works great with Vala Global Appmenu. See More

Top Con

Not a lot of features

Gedit is a text editor. Though it's simple and fast, it misses a lot of features, most notably auto-complete for several languages. See More

Top Pro

Fast

Opens very quickly. Good to use on small and medium sized files. See More

Top Pro

Great UI

The UI is lean and minimal. Everything feels quite fast and it is easy to add custom shortcuts for doing things like compiling, deploying, or testing. See More

Top Pro

Available on all systems that use Gnome

Gedit is the official text editor for Gnome and it's available wherever any version of Gnome is installed. With thousands of people using it daily and not even realizing it. See More

Platforms:macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Linux-arm

score 5 · Answer 11

Nano

Top Pro

Very easy to use

score 1 · Answer 12

Cudatext

Top Pro

Addons can be developed in Python

Specs

License:MPL 2.0

Useful built-in addon manager. See More

Price:Free

Top Pro

Minimap plugin available

Top Pro

Package for Linux ARM available

Top Pro

Addon manager

Top Pro

Many programming languages supported for syntax highlighting

About ~180 programming languages supported at the time of writing either built-in or can be added easily with the addon manager. See More

Brackets has better fonts, scheme, file opening, etc. than Atom, Geany, GEdit, Nano, Sublime Text, Visual Studio Code. See More

score 5 · Answer 13

Brackets

Top Pro

Has better defaults than most text editors

Top Con

On linux you can not open a file in Brackets from command line or file browser. Only once opened Brackets you can open files in it.

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

License:MIT

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP (plug-in)

Collaborative editing:No

If you need a general editor, UltraEdit is the way to go. If you were writing C/C++ all day, then this would be your editor. If you need to slog through large files then this is your go to editor. If you need to go through XML files, then this is your editor. If you need to sort data, then this your my editor. See More

score 4 · Answer 14

UltraEdit

Top Pro

Probably the most versatile general editor in existence

Top Con

Proprietary

It's not free and a license costs $79.99. See More

Peter J. Mello's Experience

It sounds absurd, I know, to spend any amount of money on something so simple as a text editor, but I would do it all over again to have UltraEdit. I gives me the brute force of Notepad++, the extensibility of Atom and Sublime, and the deep scripting of Microsoft Word all in a super-fast and easily understood package. Best of all, I finally have a tool that is identical on Windows, Mac or Linux, integrating perfectly with the menus and file systems on all three. See More

Top Pro

Highly flexible

UltraEdit allows you to handle groups of files as a project. See More

Top Con

The themes introduced in version 20 regressed certain aspects of syntax coloring

The themes simplified the syntax highlighting which lost the capacity to have as many colors as one wanted to define. Now it is limited to around 20 different colors. In general it's not a problem but in certain cases it broke coloring. See More

Top Pro

Extremely customizable GUI editor

UltraEdit offer the best of both worlds. it has a full on GUI along with all the shortcut commands you need. There's no need for the user to suffer 80 char limitations of a terminal editor. See More

Top Pro

Fast, stable, easy to use

Top Pro

Works perfectly with remote files

Supports several protocols for accessing remote files and working on them with the same ease as local files. Files can be integrated in the projects as normal files. See More

Top Pro

Handles large files (>1GB) extremely well

UltraEdit has small memory usage and allows for fast parsing/searching when handling large files. See More

score 3 · Answer 15

Howl

Top Pro

Beginner friendly

Specs

Supported remote file editing protocols:No

License:MIT

New themes can be easily selected and it’s not difficult to create your own. See More

Top Pro

Split screens supported

Top Pro

Code highlighting for many languages

Top Pro

Themes availabe

Top Pro

Plugin system

Top Pro

Easy to discover or remember funtions

All functions can be searched and executed from the command line See More

Context sensitive shortcut help on F1. Good online documentation. See More

score 1 · Answer 16

qemacs (for quick emacs)

Top Pro

Good documentation and help

Top Pro

Emacs like key-bindings

Use your muscle memory if you know Emacs already. See More

Top Pro

Super lightweight and fast

Top Pro

Full UTF-8 support

Including bi-directional writing. See More

Top Pro

Supports many editing modes besides text

Hex HTML / CSS Image Audio/video (maybe not the most sought after mode in a text editor, but, well, it's there) See More

Top Pro

Comfortable file browser

Easy to open and manage files (dired-mode). See More

Top Pro

Input methods for most (human) languages

Including e.g. Chinese. See More

Top Pro

Terminal and graphics mode

Supports the terminal mode with 'qemacs -nw' and a graphics mode. See More

Spacemacs is just a well-configured Emacs distribution with community-sourced best in class plugins and layers selected to take the setup pain out of Emacs. Evil mode gives the Vim bindings and modes for fast editing, while Helm makes everything discoverable to make learning to be more productive simple and unintrusive. See More

score 5 · Answer 17

Spacemacs

Top Pro

Preconfigured emacs distro

Top Con

Emacs is slow

Emacs is single threaded which means that if you enable all the great features you might be used to from Vim, it will run noticeably slower which can be quite frustrating at times. There are efforts at a concurrent Emacs, but they don't seem to be going anywhere. See More

TruthfulAequitas's Experience

Better then Emacs and Vim altogether See More

Top Pro

VIM Keybindings with EMACS ecosystem

EMACS ecosystem and language support is best in show. The EMACS is a great IDE that was in search of a good text editor. Spacemacs makes EMACS have a good text editor. See More

Easy to change themes or build your own one See More

score 3 · Answer 18

micro editor

Top Pro

Beginner friendly

Top Pro

Themes available

Top Pro

Help system integrated

Top Pro

Plugin manager

Top Pro

Easy to install

Everything is in one file. Just download See More

Write! uses a file format that saves all versions of a document. Meaning even if the app is closed and then opened up again, Write! can restore any previous version of the document. See More

score 1 · Answer 19

Write!

Top Pro

Endless undo/redo

Top Con

Not free

There are free markdown editors for windows, this is not one of them. See More

Top Pro

Interface doesn't get in the way of work

The interface is minimal, when it's windowed there are no buttons or toolbars, so it doesn't distract from work. When it's in fullscreen, there's just text, no interface at all. See More

Top Con

You need to login to the App, and it reconnects to their server

There is no offline use. See More

Top Pro

Picks up where you left off next time you start the app

Write! saves the state that it's in when closed and restores that state when opened. You can pick up working on documents in the exact same place you left off - same documents open, same cursor placement, etc. See More

Top Pro

Can double as a to-do list app

Write! has a to-do list mode that allows creating lists of items in groups (tabs) that can be ticked off when completed. See More

Top Pro

Allows easily switching between working on multiple files

Write! has tabs at the top and a tree view on the left that allows quickly switching between different files. See More