21 of the Best Free Linux Text Editors
A text editor is software used for editing plain text files.
It has many different uses such as modifying system
configuration files, writing programming language source code,
jotting down thoughts, or even making a grocery list.
Whatever
the level of sophistication of the editor, they typically have a common
set of functionality, such as searching/replacing text,
formatting text, undo/redo, importing files, as well as moving text
within the file.
However, many of the editors included in this article are feature-rich,
and can be further extended using plugins and libraries.
In many users' eyes, a text editor should be lean and mean,
fast to
start up
and shut down, without fancy splash screens or a graphical user
interface. The choice of editor has long stirred up
strong emotions. For example, the debate about whether vi or emacs
(or another) is the best editor started decades before Linux
was even conceived.
To provide an insight into the quality of software that is
available, we have compiled a list of 21 high quality Linux text
editors. There's a mix of graphical and console based
applications included. Hopefully, there will be something of
interest for all types of users.
Now, let's explore the 21 editors at hand. For
each
title we have compiled its own portal page, providing a screenshot of
the software in action, a full description with an
in-depth analysis of
its features, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.
| All Purpose |
| Emacs |
Extensible, customizable, self-documenting text editor |
| XEmacs |
Highly
customizable console / graphical editor and development system |
| Vim |
Power of
the editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set |
|
|
| Console |
| Diakonos |
More powerful than nano, with Windows key
bindings |
| jed |
Compact,
fast and powerful |
| nano |
Clone of Pico, the editor of the Pine
email client |
|
|
| Graphical |
| Cream |
Modern configuration of Vim |
| gedit |
Small
and
lightweight text editor for the GNOME
environment |
| Kate |
Multi
document editor which is part of KDE |
| Scribes |
Text
editor for GNOME
that focuses on streamlining your workflow |
| TEA |
GTK-based
with wide range of text-processing functions |
|
|
| HTML |
| Bluefish |
Powerful editor for writing websites, scripts and
programming code |
| KompoZer |
Complete
Web Authoring System |
| Quanta
Plus |
Web development tool for KDE |
| Screem |
Site
CReating
and Editing EnvironMent |
|
|
| Source code |
Geany
|
Small and
lightweight Integrated Development Environment (IDE) |
| jEdit |
A
mature programmer's Java based editor |
| SciTe |
SCIntilla
based Text Editor |
|
|
| TeX/LaTex |
| Kile |
User-friendly LaTeX source editor and TeX shell and KDE |
| LyX |
Advanced
open source document processor |
| TeXmacs |
WYSIWYW scientific word processor |
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Last Updated Sunday, November 11 2012 @ 07:25 AM EST
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