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.
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.
Try Zed.
Someone recently recommended me Textadept: https://orbitalquark.github.io/textadept/. Haven’t tried it on linux, and I am not really using it, but the interface is clean, it also has a CLI, and I thought I could give you another option :)
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 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.
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 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.
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?
+1 for Kate
Sublime Text. On any platform. Nimble, mighty, extendable.
I’m a big fan of Sublime. It’s powerful while also good at getting out of the way
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.
VSCodium, or some similar VSCode build/derivative.
I know, I know, but the critical mass is just so useful. As a random example, there are specific extensions to support game modding in Paradox scripting language, or Rimworld XML. Nothing else has so many random niches filled.
It’s fast with big files (faster than anything I’ve tried other than ‘specialized’ log readers and such), it’s a fast search, it’s got good git support, it’s got support for sudo file editing…
Nothing else has so many random niches filled.
I don’t know the VSCode ecosystem at all – but you you know the emacs one?
Pretty much everyone at work is using VSCode, maybe this is a good opportunity to dive in, thanks.
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!
Honestly just use whatever you want whenever you want. I mean for myself I’m currently using DOOM Emacs but that’ll change in a month or two when I decide to use something else. I’ll routinely rotate through Neovim/LazyVim, DOOM Emacs, Zed, Kate, whatever really. if something new comes along, i’ll use that for a bit. Hell sometimes I just can’t be bothered and will just use Nano.
But yeah, they’re all fine. use whatever you want.
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.
my path was 15-20 years of vim, a decade of emacs, and a couple of years on sublime. these days i am using zed and i like it quite a bit (you can ignore the llm agent stuff, it’s only there if you want it). sometimes i just use the built-in gnome text editor. notepad++ is my go-to on windows and i didn’t find anything quite like it on linux.
geany and vscode are decent options as well.
as somebody else pointed out: text editors are deeply personal. you’re just gonna have to try a few and see what you like.
