Which text editor do you use?
Kate and Geany are where its at tbh.
I want whatever is closest to Notepad++. Honestly, KDE already comes with that built in.
hx
Linux has made great strides to being approachable for new users. The agony of choice for so many things (distro, editor, nearly any tool family with more than one option) and the factionalism around the options is probably one of the few big obstacles left.
I don’t have a solution for the factionalism. I’d put forth a suggestion for a simple “standard” choice (Kate/gedit for GUI and nano for CLI; I personally use vim, but I think nano is more approachable) but I’m sure someone will disagree and we’re back to square one.
I use nano for simple text edits, anything more and I use sublime, or code.
Used to develop c++ in emacs though, never got the benefit of VIM, super hard to use.
Kate master race of KDE
Gentoo picked vi for me about 20 years ago…
I use nvim/ vim just because i was new and didn’t know anything I could edit on an ssh connection with beside vim. And it isn’t that hard, using lazyvim atm (still new and dont have time to configure myself) and if I can just use the mouse if I am too stupid, not that hard. But it get more and more convenient as time goes on. You encounter enough times and just think to yourself “is there a better way?” and most of the time there is! Just start with “i”, “<Esc>” and “:wq”.
It’s worse than the picture depicts. It’s not just the lovers, the elitists and the evangelists, it’s the sheer range of choice too, beyond the loudest.
I used to use nano.
Since I learned how to exit vim, without murdering it, I use vim. Vim is mostly my choice becasue deleting and moving lines is incedibly fast and it has the very best code highlighting.
All I’m gonna say is than nano is installed on almost every Linux os and has the keyboard shortcuts written on the UI.
Who doesn’t have vi/m?
Fwiw, helix also gives visual feedback on bindings if a key is a table for mutiple bindings.
Comparing an Operating System with text editors doesn’t make any sense.
Having gone thrugh the litany or editors over the years. I have stripped down my needs to nano. I just need a quick edit here and there on occiasions.
First choice: use a normal damn GUI text editor
Second choice: Nano. It’s simple and comprehensible, and a best CLI choice for newbies. You can then turn to vim, emacs, or whatever, but don’t make your life harder from the get-go
People suggesting to start with Vim are probably the same ones pushing for Arch as a first distro. C’mon.
That’s how you breed scrubs who can’t M-x-butterfly. I say give them a distro that boots into vi and starts a background process that block internet access around them. If they manage to quit vi and kill the daemon, they’re ready for Linux.
Lol
use a normal damn GUI text editor
The right choice as long as you don’t want to edit code/config files. Trust me, writing code inside libre office is not fun.
Libre office isn’t a text editor it’s a document processor; more like a gui for something like TeX, or realisticially html, than a program for reading/editing plain text.
Kate is a basic GUI text editor that can highlight syntax, suggest options and do other things useful for code and configs. Comes with KDE (which is a common newbie recommendation) and is available as Flatpak everywhere else.
But sure, there are instances where you should use CLI text editors. If you need to edit text files as root, this is generally the best option. Also, it’s the only option for headless setups and SSH. For that, nano will do.
Was gonna write that only one true text editor exists. But okay, you are right, of course
