What developer text editors are available for Ubuntu?

Geany alt text

Geany is a lightweight IDE that supports python.

Some features that I have found particularly useful include:

  • Syntax highlighting
  • Automatic indenting - especially useful for python
  • Code folding, allowing you to hide parts of your code
  • Inbuilt syntax checking and execution
  • Symbol browser
  • Embedded terminal
  • Find and replace with regexp support

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Vim Install GVim

I think Vim is amazing!

Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems.

Although Vim was originally released for the Amiga, Vim has since been developed to be cross-platform, supporting many other platforms. It is the most popular editor amongst Linux Journal readers.

Vim is free and open source software and is released under a license which includes some charityware clauses, encouraging users who enjoy the software to consider donating to children in Uganda. The license is compatible with the GNU General Public License.

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I really have to add Sublime Text 2 to the list because it's simply amazing. It's the best TextMate alternative for Linux.

It has way too many features to write the all here, but to name just a few:

  • a sidebar for projects or files and Chrome-style tabs as well as multi-pane editing which includes horizontal, vertical and even a quad pane mode
  • "Goto Anything": press Ctrl+P and type something - this will search in both filenames and lines of code across currently open files as well as recently close files. Start your search by using "#" to go to that word line, "@" for symbol or ":" for line
  • minimap which shows you an an overview of your files
  • macros, various find tools (find in files, find in open files, incremental find), easily switch between project, multiple selection, autocomplete and lots more.

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