Best Free Code Editor for Linux

Coding is great fun. You can make useful and great apps for your operating system if you can learn how to do coding. With a computer programming language, you can be a great application developer. There are various types of code editors or text editors or HTML editors for several operating systems available to make your coding capability easy and quick. At the same time, some of them have worked great across the OS. To create new software in Linux, there are many Linux code editors available out there; those can make you an expert Linux code developer.

There are numerous text editors in the market. Some are good, some are not that good. Few of them are great. You can use these editors to create your website or write your code for any programming language. No matter what operating system you are using in your computer. There are numerous editors available who can help you to create awesome websites.

There are many editors, some like Sublime text but not free, Atom is free but not the best, Vim is an awesome editor but not user-friendly for beginners… You need to consider a lot of things before you decide which editor will be best for you.

Atom

Atom is a free and open-source code editor developed by GitHub. This Electron-based code editor comes with plugin support for Node.JS, embedded Git control. Atom supports more than 30+ languages. Cross-platform editing, built-in package manager, smart auto-completion, split view, themes are some of the cool features which make Atom a “go-to” editor for developers.

Atom is cross-platform and is available for Linux, OS X and Windows.

Head over to below link to get the download link for Atom.

Brackets

Brackets is an open-source programming code editor for web designing and development which is created by some top web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This HTML editor is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X operating system. Brackets Linux HTML editor has many powerful features such as live preview, cross-platform editing, inline editors, and preprocessor support.

Features:

  • Inline Editors
  • Live Preview (applicable in Google Chrome)
  • Preprocessor Support; SCSS and LESS
  • Extensions Support
    • Emmet
    • Indent Guides
    • W3C Validation
    • Beautify
    • Git integration
  • Cross-platform Editing

How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/brackets
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install brackets

How to Remove

sudo apt-get remove --autoremove brackets

Netbeans for C/C++ Development

Netbeans is a free, open-source, and popular cross-platform IDE for C/C++ and many other programming languages. Its fully extensible using community-developed plugins.

Netbeans includes project types and templates for C/C++ and you can build applications using static and dynamic libraries. Additionally, you can reuse existing code to create your projects, and also use the drag and drop feature to import binary files into it to build applications from the ground.

Let us look at some of its features:

  • The C/C++ editor is well integrated with the multi-session GNU GDB debugger tool.
  • Support for code assistance
  • C++11 support
  • Create and run C/C++ tests from within
  • Qt toolkit support
  • Support for automatic packaging of compiled application into .tar.zip, and many more archive files
  • Support for multiple compilers such as GNU, Clang/LLVM, Cygwin, Oracle Solaris Studio, and MinGW
  • Support for remote development
  • File navigation
  • Source inspection
NetBeans IDE for C++ Programming

Bluefish Editor

Let me start with the #10 on my list. It’s Bluefish Editor. If you are a web developer, then Bluefish editor can be a good choice. It supports many advanced features such as auto-completion of tags, auto-indentation, powerful search & replaces, and integration of external programs such as make, lint, weblint, etc.

Bluefish supports more than HTML & CSS. It has support for the following languages as well.

  • Ada
  • ASP .NET and VBS
  • C/C++
  • CSS
  • CFML
  • Clojure
  • D
  • gettext PO
  • Google Go
  • HTML, XHTML and HTML5
  • Java and JSP
  • JavaScript and jQuery
  • Lua

And More…

You can see the full list of features and supported languages on the official website here.

The things that I wish I had in Bluefish were the ability to edit multiple lines simultaneously. I also want to work with multiple languages within a document that the Bluefish editor does not support. So when I select Ruby, it disables the support for HTML & CSS, which are necessary to build any web application using frameworks such as Ruby on Rails.

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is a source code editor with its own advantages. It has all the necessary or common features such as package manager, GIT support, IDE with tree view.

Sublime Text has multiple selection features where you can rename/change variable names in your source code in multiple places with a single selection.

A built-in universal search feature (press CTRL+P) where you can search functions, files, and everything – to jump to the place.

Before you head over to download, please note that Sublime Text can be downloaded and evaluated for FREE but a license is required for continued use.

Vim (Free – GNU Compatible)

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Vim is one of the most successful code editors of UNIX. Vim is most likely same as the Vi, but it has better features than it. Vim is a highly configurable Linux text editor built to make creating and changing any kind of text very efficiently. You can edit or create your Linux application with this very easily.

Features:

  • Tenacious, Multi-level Undo Tree
  • Extensive Plug-ins
  • Support for Hundreds of Modern and Old Programming Languages and File Formats
  • Powerful Search and Replace
  • Integrates With Many Tools and Templates
  • Easy to Customize

How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/vim
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vim

How to Remove

sudo apt remove vim
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:jonathonf/vim

Code::Blocks

Code::Blocks is a free, highly extensible, and configurable, cross-platform C++ IDE built to offer users the most demanded and ideal features. It delivers a consistent user interface and feels.

And most importantly, you can extend its functionality by using plugins developed by users, some of the plugins are part of the Code::Blocks release, and many are not, written by individual users not part of the Code::Block development team.

Its features are categorized into a compiler, debugger, and interface features and these include:

  • Multiple compiler support including GCC, clang, Borland C++ 5.5, digital mars plus many more
  • Very fast, no need for makefiles
  • Multi-target projects
  • A workspace that supports the combining of projects
  • Interfaces GNU GDB
  • Support for full breakpoints including code breakpoints, data breakpoints, breakpoint conditions plus many more
    display local functions symbols and arguments
  • custom memory dump and syntax highlighting
  • Customizable and extensible interface plus many more other features including those added through user-built plugins
CodeBlocks IDE for C++ Programming

Geany

Geany IDE for linux

Geany is a lightweight IDE, and it supports all major languages. Geany aims to provide a simple and fast development environment. It has all basic features such as auto-indent, syntax highlighting, auto-complete code or snippets, etc.

Geany is clean and provides a larger space to work in. So if you want a lightweight and pretty basic Linux IDE for your development, go with Geany.
Geany 0.12 has a basic plugin system. Yes, it’s basic. Unlike other IDEs that I will mention in this list, the Geany plugin is a basic system. It comes with some plugins installed that are –

  • Classbuilder – Creates source files for new class types
  • Export – Exports the current file into different formats
  • Filebrowser – Adds a file browser tab to the sidebar
  • HTML Characters – Inserts HTML character entities like ‘&’
  • Save Actions – Provides different actions related to saving files (autosave, instantsave, backupcopy)
  • Split Window – Splits the editor view into two windows

There is a list of plugins for Geany that you can get here. You can know there how you can get new plugins.

You can see the complete list of features on their official page.

Conclusion:

These days, it’s very important to speak the language of the web, and one of the most popular languages for one’s website is HTML. It’s also one of the easiest languages to master, so you won’t have to be a professional linguist well versed in Latin or Aramaic to create your own site. You just need a good code editor.

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