Linux Text Editor Trials

Features Desired

• x.org gui interface
• No time-sync file overwrite issues on SMB network shares
• Spell Check
• Interface color schemes
• Tabbed files

Mint 20 - 21

testing with: Mint 20.1 Ulyssa Ubuntu Focal Fossa 20.04 Mint 21.1 Vera Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

sed

default editor, only has the awful hamburger menu.

mousepad

buggy. has tabbed interface and standard menu bar. no spell checker. sometimes won't save text files complaining of a stream error.

xed aka text editor

tabbed and standard menu bar. Annoying habit of complaining about file has changed when file resides on SMB share.

medit aka mooedit

medit is now mooedit. not in mint repository. medit-1.2.0.tar.bz2 is current for this distribution. without mint package installation wont be integrated into mint menus. requires compile from source as it looks like the project is abandoned.

If you go to compile yourself consider some of these package requirements which don't install with defaults (use apt or synaptic - not software manager)

• Package requirements (gtk+-2.0) aka libgtk2.0-dev
• Package requirements (libxml-2.0) aka libxml2-dev

medit -- RoQA; python2-only; dead upstream; low popcon; no rdeps: * the last upstream update uploaded to debian is from 2014, * the last commit on upstream hg repo is from late 2017, * interest in this tool is declining (looking at popcon), * it's python2-based, which Debian is trying to remove. Dev says "It's built on gtk2, which is essentially dead at this point, and porting to gtk3 is not going to be easy. " ref Yevgen Muntyan - 2020-09-22

cudatext

disqualified, flathub only in software manager.

nedit

motif based. this is an odd little text editor. standard menu bar. pleasant colors. fixed width font. no spell check.

featherpad

FeatherPad is a lightweight Qt5 plain-text editor for Linux. It is independent of any desktop environment and comes with all features one would expect in a modern editor.

does spell checking, dark interface, has standard menu bar. would be great if not for constant large red time-sync file overwrite errors that appear at the bottom when saving to SMB shares. Too annoying!

kate

Kate 4 21.12.3-0ubuntu1 available in Mint 21.1, Vera, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. - Breezy-Dark colorscheme. standard menu bar. enhanced document scrolling. spell check capability. syntax highlighting, code folding, customizable layouts, regular expression support, and extensibility.

Kate has been part of the KDE Software Compilation since release 2.2 in 2001. In 2022, the KDE text-editor KWrite was modified to use the same code base as Kate with deactivated features.

legacy (older trials)

kate

The Kate text editor has served well in the past ...

medit

• + better handling of saving to network share
• - lacks spell check
• - only uses the color scheme of the windows manager
• + tabbed open files
• + easy install direct from mint repository with apt
• + gtk native

xfw

xfw is X File Write