Top 5 Best Linux Text Editors

by Ramesh Natarajan on July 1, 2009

As part of the contest that was conducted a while back, I got around 200 responses from the geeky readers who choose their favorite Linux text editor.
 
Based on this data, the top spot in the best Linux text editor goes to…
 
Vi / Vim Editor
 
Vim won by a huge margin and I don’t think this is surprise to anybody. If you are new to any of the Linux text editors listed in the top 5, read the rest of the article to understand little bit more about those editors.

 

Top 5 Best Free Text Editors - Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, RedHat, AIX, Unix
Fig: Favorite Linux Text Editor Voting Results

1. Vim Editor

Unix Vim Editor Logo

Vim 101 Hacks eBook contains 101 practical examples on various advanced Vim features that will make you fast and productive in the Vim editor.

2. gEdit Editor

Unix gEdit Editor Logo

gedit is the default text editor for the GNOME desktop environment.  This is a UTF-8 compatible text editor.

3. Nano Editor

Unix Nano Editor Logo

4. gVim Editor

5. Emacs Editor

Unix Emacs Editor Logo


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{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }

1 NetSpider July 1, 2009 at 9:34 am

my favorites:
FreeBSD: ee
Linux: nano
:)

2 coral July 1, 2009 at 10:07 am

Ah, but you forgot jedit!

http://www.jedit.org/

3 Michael July 1, 2009 at 10:59 am

Vim is amazing. Nano, and especially gEdit, are a lot more convenient for beginning Linux users.

4 octopusgrabbus July 1, 2009 at 11:18 am

I did not see http://vim.wikia.com mentioned on your list of sites. It’s got great vim tips, scripts, and such.

5 Zeke Krahlin July 1, 2009 at 11:41 am

TEA text editor gets my vote! It’s a feature-rich GUI text editor, don’t know how I could live without it.

http://tea-editor.sourceforge.net/

6 Binny V A July 1, 2009 at 1:06 pm

My favorite is Kate/Kwrite.

7 Daniel July 1, 2009 at 1:25 pm

Looks like you got around 158 responses, which is a far cry from 200.

I’m all for rounding, but you basically added an additional 25% to the true figure.

8 bubblefish July 1, 2009 at 3:14 pm

I can’t believe it… only two votes for emacs?? lol

9 hans berger July 2, 2009 at 1:12 am

Anybody knows geany? My favorite!

10 lakshmanan July 2, 2009 at 3:00 am

vim rocks.

11 Rick July 2, 2009 at 12:23 pm

I like Vim and Nedit.

12 inkpad July 3, 2009 at 10:15 am

scite should have been in there somewhere

13 Arun Shivaram July 4, 2009 at 8:02 am

My choices are Vim and Gedit

14 Joe Klemmer July 7, 2009 at 9:32 am

It’s always difficult to cover text editors. There are almost as many editors are there are people who use them. Plus, the majority of techies tent to use more than one editor for different types of tasks. For example;

I use vim for the majority of my text editing but I also use pico/nano for email as (al)pine is The One. It would not be uncommon for me to use gedit, nedit or mousepad either.

15 Ramesh Natarajan July 8, 2009 at 11:22 pm

@NetSpider, @coral, @Michael, @Zeke Krahlin, @Binny V A, @hans berger, @Lakshmanan, @Rick, @Inkpad, @Arun Shivaram, @Joe Klemmer,

Thanks for sharing your favorite editor with us.

For those who are interested, following are the different editors mentioned in the previous comments that are not listed in the “top 5″ of this article.

FreeBSD ee Editor
JEdit
TEA Text Editor
Kate / KWrite Editor
Geany Editor
NEdit is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System
A free source code editor for Win32 and X
Pico Text Editor
Mousepad Editor

16 runlevel0 July 11, 2009 at 2:11 am

Kate opens my list,
I am also starting to use Geanny, alltough this is more a lightweight IDE, therefore quite convenient.

I have also been using Emacs for C development, but I am now trying to get into Perl and I find other editors more useful.

17 Ramesh Natarajan July 14, 2009 at 9:58 pm

@runlevel0, Looks like you are using multiple editors. Just playing around with all these editors can be lot of fun.

18 rakesh uv July 15, 2009 at 10:47 pm

This is for newbies,
I like vim, personally i feel for newbies, they should stick to an editor(i preferred vim),learn it thoroughly, explore and exploit it , add plug ins and customize it for your needs, see if you could do almost most of the work done(this is a gradual process, need lot of patients, but worthy).

If any editor doesn’t allow you do the above, then that seems to be not a better editor.
if you have a lot to do with editor and have an hacking attitude use vim/emacs, they have these common features

->few key storkes
->interface to shell, very rich inbuilt commands for text editing
->wonderful plug ins and help over net,
->good performance, almost on UNIX machine you could at least find a vi.
->along with plunging like c vim, c tags, c scope, and interface with gdb makes it perfect for development.

but you should also get to know and get updated about other editors to see if your editor is not falling behind, if yes then try to get that features in yours,

19 Ismael Casimpan July 16, 2009 at 3:40 am

Vi will actually be the clear winner as it’s always installed in whatever version of Linux or Unix based OS. If you don’t know vi, you will be paralyzed in critical situations where the OS is stripped down to the minimum with vi the only way to edit.

20 Eloar August 11, 2009 at 2:48 pm

There is no editors from KDE. I prefere Kate or kWrite, which are fast and simple, but powerful.

21 Electric Ego November 29, 2009 at 1:19 am

GEdit is nice one. Love its’ tabbed interface and syntax highlighting. For barebone, notepad like interface, I use mousepad.

22 MattE July 11, 2010 at 7:11 pm

Obviously followers of Ramesh are Vim fans. Emacs is the the mentally disturbed. Eclipse is for developers who have too much RAM or CPU. Vi and nano is always there for you. Vim rules them all!

23 anonymous July 1, 2011 at 3:35 pm

The best is gvim then vim

24 fionn February 18, 2012 at 3:51 pm

I’d like to point out that ‘ed’ is the standard editor.

25 Econ Wrangler, PhD CFA April 11, 2012 at 4:17 am

1’000 Karma Points for cracking me up…

MattE, “…Emacs is for the mentally disturbed.” Quite so. Emacs was my first editor after leaving vax/vms for att unix. Anybody remember getting mail and (the real) ‘news’ on Tin as a character window through Emacs? Or muttering in frustration at not finding Emacs, so typing $ vi -o.

fionn, who reminds us that ed is THE editor, gets a laugh at being one of those hard arsed types who actually likes writing awk scripts. Probably several before lunchtime.

26 james May 16, 2012 at 1:24 pm

Nedit … a hangover from Irix days but still useful and good.

27 Martin June 8, 2012 at 7:42 am

Emacs is suitable to lisp and ruby~
Vi and Vim is used to code like C/C++
Say gEdit is used to HTML, JS .etc.

28 Ardi July 27, 2012 at 1:10 am

Vim on console,
Emacs or Geany on gui

29 gw October 19, 2012 at 2:28 pm

emacs is the best. PERIOD.

30 Fergus November 18, 2012 at 7:04 am

Vim? Seriously? Do people pick this specifically because they want to make sure that people’s initial experience of Linux-type systems is as off-putting as possible?

If you still think of GUIs and user interface design as new-fangled fripperies, not fit for proper computer folks, then okay – VIM or EMACS are completely reasonable choices in that context. If you’re used to being able to figure out how to do anything at all in an application without having to look it up, or if you ever find yourself recommending text editors for anyone who isn’t a massive old-school geek, please, nano, every time. Or Geany if you have the option of using some kind of windowing system.

31 Roger November 29, 2012 at 2:28 pm

Mt McKinley is not the highest mountain in the world. But it has just about the largest distance from base to top. In similar fashion, vi/vim has the largest gap between availability (everywhere) and usability (practically non-existent, unintuitive, etc.) Emacs is not much better. @Fergus has it right: both of those are dinosaurs.

Which editor, besides those, is the most generally findable/installable/usable without a lot of training? One GUI-based, of course. (What used to be called WYSIWYG.) If nano or Geany is easy to get and install, fine, as long as the process of getting it installed and usable is not worse than the curve to learn one of the old dinosaurs.

32 boutrosdu93 December 15, 2012 at 10:01 pm

I’d like to understand why so meany people chose win
because they are clearly not the best to use them when you begin with linux but have a completely inuintitive way of functionning and saying it’s the best because it’s on every unix system dooooh
i’m sure many hours are spent in training people in these useful stuff whereas it would be easy to add a small text editor and if you want efficiency you still have vi

33 hadi ghasemian January 23, 2013 at 1:24 am

only eclipse

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