What is your preferred Text and Source-code Editor on Linux?

Linux
#1

What is your view on different Text and source-code editors available for Linux? What are you using to accompany your work?

I Have used ‘vim’ for considerable amount of time and then i find ‘nano’. nano just works out-of-box for me. It is easy to handle (my view). While working on GUI, i prefer gedit again for simplicity and ease. What you have to say?

Anyone here who is using emacs as primary Text/Source-code Editor? I have used it once or twice but my experiance was not good with it. I didn’t find a reason why it is so much hyped by Richards M. Stallamn (I am a big fan of him, for his works).

#2

I gather when you mention source-code you also refer to HTML and CSS. I’m using “Brackets” brackets.io - A modern, open source text editor that understands web design. Hope this help you. Works fine in Linux.

#3

I am habituated to using vi and I end up using it. I hope we are not getting into a “love-one-hate-another” debate here, as those go on for eternity. :relaxed: Having said that, I wouldn’t be quick to judge emacs. Emacs is arguably “one of the most extensible” editors in existence. The extensibility and customisability is what it is popular for. Emacs has many variants, GNU Emacs is most widely used.

Most emacs users would encourage you to let go of the mouse completely and see for yourself how fast you can be with the keyboard only. Emacs comes with an inbuilt help system which is adequately self sufficient, meaning you wont need the internet as much for help documentation.

Emacs Lisp is something you would want to learn more about. I am just scratching the surface here and I can go on and on. But I would encourage you to spend more time and remember again emacs was and is built to be highly customizable and been worked upon by passionate contributors since late 1970s.

So it would not be a brag to say that you might be able to customize emacs to behave nicely as a ‘code editor’ for most of your needs.

Quoting from the Emacs Wiki:

With Emacs, you have only one set of keystrokes for text editing that
you need to memorize – anywhere and everywhere. Emacs gives you an
environment where you can do that: coding, writing, compiling,
debugging, chatting, web browsing, calendar, diary, todo, address book,
blogging, ….If you want to be really fast about editing text
only, then most editors are very similar once the necessary shortcuts
and commands have been learned. In the end, the slowest link in the
chain is usually the user doing the typing. When you want to go beyond
simple text editing, however, Emacs will grow with you.

If all this does not stoke your desire towards emacs and you are concerned with coding in HTML and CSS as presumed by jjstccean, and want it to behave akin to Notepad++ or similar editors, then Bluefish is a dainty editor.

Hope this helps.

  • Tej

#4

Did I mention Viper ? The best of both worlds viz. Vi and Emacs?

#5

Personally I am a big fan of vim. I use it on a daily basis and I like how many functions it has and how easy it is to edit text in it. On the other hand, many people like emacs and nano. I found them both really difficult to use, probably cause I am used to vim. Another interesting text editor is pico. I saw a colleague of mine using it and doing his job really fast (system administrator). Still I think you should go with whatever you are used to and makes do your job faster and more efficiently. For new comers, I suggest giving vim some time and it will pay back.

1 Like
#6

I am using vim version 7.4, vim is very powerful editor and
has a lot of capabilities

#7

Text and Source-code Editor on Linux

http://worldofgnome.org/5-of-the-best-programming-editors-under-linux-2014/

5-Sublime Text 3
4-Brackets
3-Light Table
2-Dart Editor
1-spot_Eclipse / Aptana

(Vim)-http://www.vim.org/download.php & http://www.vim.org/mercurial.php

Also,

Atom, UltraEdit and Sublime-text.
http://www.sublimetext.com/

#8

Leafpad for the text and source code editor…
Bluefish…hands down best in my opinion, for an html editor.
CodeLite for C, C++, PHP and Node.js IDE.

#9

I like Codelobster