While I understand the lack of proper open source alternatives for some software like AutoCAD and After Effects, it always felt weird that the best IDEs/Text Editors are made by big corporations, because you know, these are the tools programmers use.
I tried vim/neovim, which I enjoy using, but I’ve come to prefer visual editors instead of text based. Kate looks promising, and I’m willing to contribute to it in my free time, but it just has that “amateurish” feel to it that I can’t explain.
Anyone aware of other alternatives?
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I’ve been keeping a list of alternatives for a while now that I really like:
- Pulsar - An actively developed fork of Atom once Microsoft killed it off. Disclosure: I’m on the Pulsar team so I’m more than a little biased here but if you want to get involved we are always after people who want to contribute and we have a very friendly and active Discord server. First thing we did was re-implement the package backend and migrate it so we were able to keep the thousands and thousands of community packages for download.
- Lite-XL - A really lightweight and fast editor written in C and Lua that is very actively developed. I use this on some less powerful systems.
- Lapce - Another lightweight and very fast editor written in Rust and is in the middle of moving to their own UI framework. Not that extensible at the moment but supports LSP plugins.
Then for terminal based editors I really like Helix which is vim-like but uses a selection -> action model (like Kakoune). I really like it because it requires almost no configuration.
Thanks for your work on Pulsar. Atom was my go to simple editor before MS killed it off. I’m still fuming now. I really need to try Pulsar :). Been using Kate for now.
Playing around with lite-xl, thanks for the recommendation. Lacks many features for now, but seems to have a huge potential.
I see a lot of potential in Lapce, but sadly the extensions (which are necessary, since it has basically no ootb language support) are very poorly maintained and outdated. Last I used it the Javascript/Typescript support was simply not sufficient for active use. I am very hopeful for Lapce’s future though!
Edit: Just checked and the TS/JS extension is still on version
2022.11.0. The code formatting still doesn’t work (for me) :(Lite-XL looks really cool, it’s awesome to finally find a modern editor that is not using webview bloat for the UI.
VSCodium. Basically ungoogled-chromium but VS Code and Microsoft.
Lunarvim
Actually a pretty good on-the-go alternative to GUI IDEs. Always using it to quickly edit configs and scripts.
I am using it, as an “IDE” for everything.
Astrovim too.
How does it compare to similar stuff like AstroNvim, SpaceVim, NVChad, etc? I’m trying to choose one but having difficulties 😥
It’s got a pretty good community, you always find some help online. It comes per default only with “needed” plugins, which makes it a pretty nice IDE already. If you ever need more plugins, it’s also not complicated to install them,
Good community is always a plus for any project. Thanks for the recommendation!
People are writing different opinions, but you are right, best IDEs are comercial software.
I think it is just because it takes a lot of time and effort on boring stuff to make this tools smooth. Generally in open source we work on fun parts and leave those boring last 20% unfinished, which is ok with me.l
Maybe codium will be what your looking for
I have VSCodium installed via flatpak. Works perfectly.
Edit: has open-source extensions too.
If you like Kate you can try Kdevelop. It’s the same editor base but a bit more IDE like
I wouldn’t exchange my neovim config for anything. After getting used to how vim works and installing all the plugins I need, I feel like this is my favourite editor. It looks nice and I enjoy using keyboard shortcuts over using a mouse.
That said, the day I lose my neovim config is the day I die. If it disappears I’m doomed
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I am aware of this one, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I think I’ll start using Kate, and contribute whatever features I’m missing if I can.
i just use vim for everything except debugging, and vscode for debugging
I am on the path VSCodium --> Lapce under NixOS for visual editors and to decorporate my workflow. i.e. away from VSCode which is [otherwise] exceptional.
However, Helix looks incredible.
If you program in Python check out Spyder, some other languages also have specialized IDEs that can be really good.
I like KDevelop or Gnome Builder for KDE or Gnome, respectively. If you’re okay with proprietary IDEs, the ones from Jetbrains generally work well and can be installed via Flathub. I honestly prefer them to VSCode or Atom.
EDIT: Gnome Builder supports containers, so it’s perfect for immutable operating systems like Fedora Silverblue. It can be a bit buggy, however.
Sublime Text is great.
I alternate between VCCodium and Kate, both are fine to me, but Kate feels snappier since I’m on KDE. It’s also less of a resource drain.
I can’t manage to make Kate look half descent on Mint (Cinnamon). It does look great on Plasma
Ouch, I can imagine how it feels. I’ve always been a KDE user, but I’ve tried other DEs before Since I used lots of KDE stuff (Krita, Kate, KdenLive) I stuck with it.
That’s actually an issue with most Debian-/Ubuntu-based distributions, as Debian/Ubuntu still does not package QGnomePlatform. This is preinstalled on Fedora and makes Qt apps, like Kate, look nice on GNOME.
If I remember correctly, Flatpak apps from Flathub are unaffected by this Debian/Ubuntu issue, as Flathub includes QGnomePlatform in their runtimes.
I frequently use Kate as a backup as well. Do you configure it in anyway?
I like to remove the top menu and have the icons to the sidebar. Other than that, I activate a few plugins and keep it pretty vanilla. Most of the default configs are fine to me, and the command bar helps a lot.
