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.
Fig: Favorite Linux Text Editor Voting Results
1. Vim Editor
- Home Page: http://www.vim.org/
- Author: Bram Moolenaar
- Latest Stable Version: Vim 7.2
- Written in: C and Vim script
- Operating System: Cross-platform (Unix, Linux and Windows)
- Read more about Vim Editor at Wikipedia
- Read our on-going Vi / Vim Tips and Tricks series for some awesome Vim Hacks
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
gedit is the default text editor for the GNOME desktop environment. This is a UTF-8 compatible text editor.
- Home Page: http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/
- Latest Stable Release: 2.26.2
- Written in: C, Python
- Operating System: Cross-platform
- Read more about gEdit at Wikipedia
3. Nano Editor
- Home Page: http://www.nano-editor.org/
- Latest Stable Release: 2.0.9
- Read more about Nano editor
4. gVim Editor
- Home Page: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/gui.html
- gVim is the graphical version of the famous Vim editor
5. Emacs Editor
- Home Page: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
- Current Stable Release: 22.3
- First Release of Emacs was in the year 1976
- Written in C and Emacs lisp
- Operating System: Cross-platform
- Read more about Emacs Editor at Wikipedi
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My name is Ramesh Natarajan. I will be posting instruction guides, how-to, troubleshooting tips and tricks on Linux, database, hardware, security and web. My focus is to write articles that will either teach you or help you resolve a problem. Read more about
{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
my favorites:
FreeBSD: ee
Linux: nano
Ah, but you forgot jedit!
http://www.jedit.org/
Vim is amazing. Nano, and especially gEdit, are a lot more convenient for beginning Linux users.
I did not see http://vim.wikia.com mentioned on your list of sites. It’s got great vim tips, scripts, and such.
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/
My favorite is Kate/Kwrite.
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.
I can’t believe it… only two votes for emacs?? lol
Anybody knows geany? My favorite!
vim rocks.
I like Vim and Nedit.
scite should have been in there somewhere
My choices are Vim and Gedit
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.
@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
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.
@runlevel0, Looks like you are using multiple editors. Just playing around with all these editors can be lot of fun.
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,
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.
There is no editors from KDE. I prefere Kate or kWrite, which are fast and simple, but powerful.
GEdit is nice one. Love its’ tabbed interface and syntax highlighting. For barebone, notepad like interface, I use mousepad.
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!
The best is gvim then vim
I’d like to point out that ‘ed’ is the standard editor.
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.
Nedit … a hangover from Irix days but still useful and good.
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.
Vim on console,
Emacs or Geany on gui
emacs is the best. PERIOD.
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.
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.
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
only eclipse