Text Editors for Linux

We are speaking about text editors here, not about word processors. The text editors are sorted in alphabetical order, not in any order of preference.

amaya

amaya (version 9.53~dfsg.0-1) is an alleged wysiwyg html editor. My trial on Ubuntu was a catastroph. Clicking into the preview does rub out chars. View source does freeze the app, only kill process helps...

bluefish

bluefish is a text editor for programmers working with gnome. Similar or even better than quanta. It has a file manager side pane, syntax highlighting, many toolbars designed to edit html files. The toolbar buttons allow quick inserts of br, nbsp, h1, h2, links, images, form elements and much more. In the quick bar you can put yourself the toolbar buttons you need most often. Bluefish has a search replace for all the opened files. This is very convenient when you have to replace a word in many html files.

cssed

cssed is a specialized editor to edit and validate css files, but it has many other applications. cssed can edit any txt file and program file like php, html, and whatever programming language you want. cssed can convert line endings (EOL) from whatever standard to whatever standard, i.e from LF, CR, CR/LF to any other one of the 3 variants, thus it lets you convert txt files from *nix or Windows or Mac line endings to any other of the 3 variants. cssed can visualize the CR and LF at the line ends for a maximal oversight of what you are doing.

EditPad

EditPadLite and EditPadPro have a nice feature that allows to search-replace for all the opened documents. The search replace dialog is not a dialog window like most others do. It is a reserved zone at the bottom of the application. This has the big advantage to allow a full vision of the text and the surroundings of the found words. The classical search-replace dialog window like gedit, bluefish and many others do implement it, has the very annoying habit to recover the exact part of the text file you would like to see. Thus the Editpad solution is much better.

gedit

gedit 2.18.1 is an editor for gnome with a few plugins (file manager pane , etc). It comes close to quanta and is even better for html special chars. It has no toolbar to insert br, nbsp, h1, h2, etc like quanta, but the snippets can do the job. It has no search-replace for all the opened files.

gnotepad+

gnotepad+ 1.3.3 is an editor for gnome. It has a toolbar to insert br, nbsp, h1, h2, etc like quanta.

gtkedit

gtkedit is a minimalistic editor, similar to notepad.

hnb

hnb is a hierarchical notebook for the console, or like I call them "a tree editor".

kate

kate 2.5.6, is a text editor for kde. It is a good editor with file manager side pane, syntax highlighting for many programming languages, but makes a big mess with the toolbar buttons, loosing a lot of them often. Adding one (and removing it) will restore the missing buttons but it is annoying. This silly behaviour has been observed with suse + kde and with unbuntu + gnome.

kommander editor

kommander editor is a text editor for kde, apparently not typically for php nor html.

kwrite

kwrite 4.5.6, a text editor for kde, has syntax highlighting like kate, but is not multi-document like kate. It has no side pane.

mousepad

mousepad is a text editor for the xfce environment, yet minimal (like notepad ?), but we hope it will grow in functionality soon.

nano

nano is a command line text editor which is a little bit easier to use than other command line editors, in case you absolutely need to, e.g. to do repairs! But of course it is not comparable to comfortable gui editors like gedit, bluefish, kate or quanta. Another console editor that is more comfortable for those who like a gui is xjed.

notecase

notecase is a hierarchical notebook, or like I call them "a tree editor". notecase is somehow similar to tuxcards. The searching is much better than in tuxcards, but some tuxcards features are missing.

peacock

peacock version 1.9.1-7.1, is an alleged html editor for gnome. peacock is a joke, the menu preferences does nothing, the menu new does nothing, the menu open looks normal but clicking on the ok button closes the app.

quanta

quanta is a text editor for programmers working with kde. It has a file manager side pane, syntax highlighting, many toolbar buttons designed to edit html files and much more.

screem

screem version 0.16.1-4ubuntu1 is an editor somehow like quanta but less convenient. The file manager side bar can only show home, no folder parallel to home, useless.

tuxcards

tuxcards version 1.2 is a hierarchical notebook, or like I call them "a tree editor". The notebook for tux freaks.

treeline

treeline version 1.0.0b-1 is a hierarchical notebook, or like I call them "a tree editor". Treeline is somehow similar to tuxcards, but not compatible. Personally I prefer tuxcards.

xjed

xjed (version 0.99.18-8.etch.4) is a console tool with menus. That means that it has some of the comfort of a gui text editor while still being a console tool.

Personal preferences

Presently, the editors I am using daily are gedit, bluefish and tuxcards. cssed just from time to time, Editpad at rare occasions. May be I will use notecase instead of tuxcards somewhere in the future (if I can easily translate the huge tuxcards file into a notecase file).

Remark: Most of the editors above must be installed by the user. For Ubuntu users, all of them, except Editpad, are available in Synaptic. Kate is installed by default with KDE installs, gedit is installed by default with gnome installs.