I am a big fan of Notepad++ in windows and I have been using Notepadqq, a linux clone. Lately though, I have been experiencing more and more crashes and bugs with it. Looking for advice and wisdom. Is there something better? Should I stick it out and try and troubleshoot my problems with Notepadqq?
Edit: Just wanted to thank everyone for all the great advice! I know people can sometimes be territorial and/or religious about their choices here, but people in this thread were helpful and informative, so thank you!
I am trying out Notepad Next but I also installed Notepad++ with Wine. Both seem promising, thanks.
I also used Notepadqq for the first year I used Linux, I ended up switching to Kate since it did everything I liked about Notepad++ and it came installed with my KDE desktop soooo.
Also for the few times I gotta use a terminal text editor I use Micro (It really should be the default instead of Nano)
Helix, Kakoune, build Codium from source would be my suggestions.
I use Helix now mainly - I use Codium if I need a graphical editor for something, or one of it’s plugins.
At work the systems use VSCode but I use the Dance plugin with Helix bindings to get some of that functionality back.
Emacs has entered the chat.
With emacs you don’t learn once, nor twice but at least 100 times. but seriously, it’s a very nice editor that you either fall for life or not at all.
Fuck you.
Love,
Neovim(Just meming, emacs is actually pretty cool tbh and you probably are too.)
Zed with all the AI stuff turned off is surprisingly nice
Sublime isn’t freeware but it also doesn’t seem to have any nags if you use it beyond 30 days. Up to your own software morals if you decide to pay the $99 for it or not but it is a rock solid editor and may be worth the money.
Try Zed.
What kind of text editing do you do? Coding? Config files? Hard to recommend if we don’t know the use case :P
If you want to get into terminal text-editors, I recommend https://helix-editor.com/ . It’s modal like vi/vim/neovim etc., but has much easier and more intuitive keybinds, and comes batteries-included and doesn’t require extensions.
Downsides: Not fully mature, there’s no extension support so not suited for very niche use-cases. And if you ever have to administrate a server through SSH, it will likely only have vim which has different motions and keybinds.
Been using it for 99% of my coding for three ish years, very happy.
Vim!
If you really don’t want to then try kwrite for something more simple or kate for a full IDE. There both developed by kde and been around for a while.
If push comes to shove, you can still use Notepad++ under Wine. It works.
I use Kate for my editing needs, fast and good regexp work, which is important for me.
I prefer editing in the terminal, but when it comes to gui editors i’ve heard a lot of good things about kate and geany.
If you want a GUI, Kate is my favorite. Otherwise Neovim
I have been using kate a bit and it has been a decent experience so far.
Try Kwrite. I’ve liked it a lot more than Kate.
FYI Kate and Kwrite use the same code base under the hood but display with different UIs.
https://kate-editor.org/post/2022/2022-03-31-kate-ate-kwrite/
I know. That’s why I’m saying it’s worth trying…for the improved UI.
I get random crashes from kate in the last few versions (appimage). But other than that, it’s the best foss gui code editor.
If you want a gui editor maybe Kate?
Notepadqq not the best reimplementation of notepad++ I am using NotepadNext https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext
I have gotten a lot of great feedback to this post, but if I had to give points for the most spot-on answer, you would get it. Thanks!
Text editors are a really personal choice and there are a million different ones. I use either Kate or Micro. Both are great for my use.
Fair point. I have worn many hats through my IT career, I started out as a Windows NT admin back when it was cutting edge technology in the 90s. I fell in love with a text editor called Ultraedit that my org had a site license for. When I left that org after many years I missed Ultraedit and was delighted to find Notepad++ had most of features I loved. Now the course of my career has found me become a Linux admin and personal linux user for many years now. I have been using Notedpad-qq for years, but recently it seems to have gotten worse and I have had instances where crashes resulted in lost data. I liked the idea of having the same general UI and features as Notepad++ because I still need to use Windows at work. But I am reluctantly admitting maybe it is a time for a change.
Apologies for the digression, but I wanted to share some of the waypoints in my journey that influenced my personal choice.
Neovim is the way and here’s imo why:
- Vim keybinds: yes, we take more time editing then actually writing text/code so it’s faster to use a modal text editor, you just have to learn it a bit at the start. Vim language is easy, you just tell it what you want it to do (ie. diw: delete inner word, ciw: change inner word etc.)
- highly customisable, even if you don’t want to cherry pick your plugins and choose a config, there are many out of the box configured (lazyvvim comes to mind but there are many)
- if you’re a developer you can find plugins for everything you need, debugger, lsp, autocompletion etc.
