You need a text editor to write code, and many text editors exist for you to choose from. In this article, we will look at the best text editors for Linux, compare their features, and point out each editor’s strengths and weaknesses.
To get an idea of their features, see the list below:
Sublime Text
Sublime Text is a wonderful IDE-like text editor for Linux (and other platforms). It’s a wonderful piece of software. The developers themselves say that Sublime text is “a sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose.”
It has a wide array of excellent functionality, including multiple selections for easy variable redefinition, easy GoTo functionality with lines, files, and symbols, and a vast command palette.
It also has a powerful Python API, so you can create your own custom plugins as well that will suit your needs. Sublime also has some really nice quality-of-life features, like brightly-colored syntax highlighting, tabs for multiple projects that are easy to navigate, and its notorious feature of “never losing a project.”
You don’t have to save anything – it will just remember the projects you were working on. It’s great to see that in an editor where people are supposed to get real work done – if your laptop dies or you the application suddenly quits, you’ll still have all your work. While Sublime Text is available to use for free, it is still a licensed software. If you have used and liked Sublime Text, I strongly recommend purchasing the license to support the developer.
CudaText
CudaText is a neat open-source text editor which is a cross-platform option that also includes Linux support.
It may not be the best there is, but it is suitable for HTML/CSS coding; it gives you the ability to tweak the editor’s theme with a couple of options available.
If you want a simpler and faster solution with a modern look/feel, you should try CudaText. Here are some key features that it offers:
- Syntax highlighting
- Code tree
- Code folding
- Binary/hex viewer
- Cross-platform support
You can get the latest release files to install from FossHub. Also, you may check our separate article on CudaText to explore more about it and how to install it.
In either case, head to their official website for more information.CudaText
Gedit
If you want a simple yet elegant experience, Gedit is a great option.
Of course, it may not give you a rich UI—but it is a clean and modern-looking text editor compared to some others.
Some of the key features it offers are:
- Full support for internationalized text
- Syntax highlighting
- Word auto-completion
- Spell-checking
- Text wrapping
- Cross-platform
It comes pre-installed by default on Linux distributions with the GNOME desktop environment. But, if you do not have it installed, you can install it from your respective package manager or the Software Center.
You can even find it available for Windows 10 and macOS. For more details, you should check out their official GNOME wiki page.Gedit
Atom
If you’re looking to jump in at the deep end of text editing, then the GitHub-developed Atom could be for you. It can be a bit confusing when starting from scratch to know which packages to install, but that’s the nature of the text-editing beast.
Atom isn’t the lightest text editor out there, and if you’re just configuring files or other small-ish jobs, then it might not be for you. For things like programming and scripting, however, and working across multiple files at the same time, Atom is up to the task. It supports thousands of packages (all accessible via the built-in package installer) and plugins written in Node.js. If you’re coming to Atom from the popular Vim, you can use it in vim-mode to help you find your feet, and in 2017 GitHub released an IDE version that can help speed things along for many users.
Atom has an elegant GUI implementation, though you can also use its command-line mode for a more familiar experience. It’s trickier than most text editors to grasp but invaluable for heavier-lifting tasks.
Nano – Best Editor for the Command Line Beginner
You have text editors that are designed for basic usage. You have text editors designed for advanced users. But what about a text editor that is designed for the user, not the usage? This is where Nano comes into the picture. Nano is a text editor that is known for its user-friendly command-line design.
It is easy to learn and use for beginners, while fairly keeping up with the requirements of an advanced user. Developed under the GNU General Public License, Nano was first launched in 2000. It soon spread among the public due to its simplistic and easy to grasp interface.
Nano offers features such as automatic indentation, interactive find-and-replace function, soft text wrapping, and case-sensitive searching.
Nano works only as a command-line utility. It is great for users who need a simple text editor while working with the command line. Nano is easy to use even though it’s a command-line editor. Unlike VIM, it allows you to work with it in the same way as you’d with a GUI text editor.
You can install Nano with the following command:
sudo apt install nano
Geany
Looking for a simple text editor that can double as an IDE? Geany is probably your best choice. This is a text editor specifically designed around development. In fact, it has tons of development features: call tips, code navigation and even a code building system.
If you’re looking for a graphical text editor and have a serious interest in writing code, Geany should be on your list.
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code, or VSCode for short, is a Microsoft-developed code editor, though it can double as a simple text editor, too. It is free to use and based on open-source tech, and it’s quite lightweight for the power it has.
VSCode is quite a powerful editor. It has a huge variety of extensions available. These extensions allow you to add additional language support, themes for VSCode, and formatting options, and more. Primarily with language support, this will turn VSCode into an IDE for any of these programming languages. There’s a built-in terminal, which is huge for running and testing scripts. Additionally, there’s a technology called Intellisense.
Visual Studio Code is a popular code editor from Microsoft. Now don’t push the panic button just yet. Visual Studio Code is completely open-source.
In fact, Visual Studio Code was among the first few ‘peace offerings’ from Microsoft to the Linux and open-source world.
Visual Studio Code is an excellent code editor for all kinds of tasks. It’s lightweight as well. Some key features are:
- Intellisense provides useful hints and auto-completion features
- Built-in Git support
- Built-in extension manager with plenty of extensions available to download
- Integrated terminal
- Custom snippet support
- Debugging tools
- Support for a huge number of programming languages
- Cross-platform
Because of their similarity, it is often difficult to choose between Atom and VS Code. Both are owned by Microsoft, after all.
Installing Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu and other distributions such as Fedora-based ones is very easy, thanks to Snap and Flatpak packages.
Alternatively, you can also download .deb/.rpm packages for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions from its official website.Visual Studio Code
This takes syntax highlighting one step further, allowing for intelligent code completion based on variables, functions, and imported modules. It’s a simple editor when you want it to be, but you can pack lots of features and functionality into this lightweight program.
Also read:Visual Studio Code First Impressions
XED – Best Text Editor for Extendability
This editor comes pre-installed with a ton of functionalities and additions that make it a great replacement for Gedit and Pluma which has been used as the default editors in many distributions.
Linux mint has adopted Xed as the default GUI text editor instead of Gedit and after using it for long enough, we know exactly why. Xed is for programmers who love their text editors to be very flexible.
Apart from that, it’s also an X-app. You can go ahead and install Xed on your system with the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:embrosyn/xapps sudo apt install xed
Gamma Text Editor – Best Lightweight GUI Editor
We used it, and we loved it. Every single element of the editor is customizable, just like it is for VIM. The difference is, Gamma is complete GUI editor.
It’s very lightweight on resources and doesn’t hog memory like some of the more powerful GUI text editors do. Gamma Text editor allows you to enjoy a very powerful editor even on a low powered machine.
For Python lovers, Gamma is built entirely in Python. The packages for this editor may not be available for your distribution. So this installation method will be common for all the distributions.
git clone https://gitlab.com/hamadmarri/gamma-text-editor cd gamma-text-editor chmod +x setup.sh ./setup.sh
Conclusion
You can do quite a fair bit with just the terminal, but sometimes you just want to write up some code without it getting in your way. You probably know that there are many development text editors out there that you could use on linux.