When comparing Kate vs Boostnote, the Slant community recommends Boostnote for most people. In the question“What are the best note taking apps for UNIX-like systems?” Boostnote is ranked 8th while Kate is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose Boostnote is:
Supports Windows, macOS and Linux.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
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.
Pro Fast and minimaistic
Kate is pretty fast and lightweight. This helps it with it's start up speed.
Pro Syntax highlighting
Kate supports syntax highlighting for over 180 languages, from Assembler to Zsh.
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.
Pro Thriving plugin ecosystem
Lots of plugins allow Kate to expand or shrink based on your needs. It includes GDB integration, XML completion, and symbol viewing to speed up programming.
Pro By far one of the best and lightest text editors.
Notepads alternative (for the Windows users).
Pro Vi entry mode
Kate has a vi entry mode.
Pro Cross platform support
Supports Windows, macOS and Linux.
Pro Markdown support
Pro Free
Pro Open source
See here.
Pro Great for developers
Boostnote is great for developers looking to take programming notes with code snippets and such.
Pro Supports code snippets and syntax highlighting
Boostnote has the ability to store code snippets and comes with syntax highlighting out of the box, supporting many languages.
Pro Works offline
Boostnote doesn't require an internet connection to work. You can write notes offline and sync later.
Pro Global search, tag feature
Pro Comes with many themes
Boostnote comes with many themes out of the box, most of which are popular themes and color schemes for code editors: e.g. 3024, base16, solarized, tomorrow.
Pro vim/emacs key bindings available
Boostnote supports vim/emacs key bindings. If you're a developer familiar with either of them, navigation should be easy to pick up.
Cons
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.
Con Some of the features are not consistent
Con Must use third-party service for sync-ing (Dropbox, etc.)
Boostnote does not have sync-ing capabilities and relies on third-party services to fulfil notes storage. There are additional steps involved to set this up.
Con Can't work in "real" offline mode
Con Very poor syncing
Data loss may occur on syncing.
