With Unity, you can make 3D and 2D games for just about everything, including Windows, Mac, Xbox, Playstation, Android, iOS, and more. It also supports assets from the likes of 3ds Max, Maya.

We all use text editors to take notes, save web addresses, write code, as well as other uses. Every operating system comes with a default, basic text editor, but most of us install our own enhanced text editors to get more features.

In this article, we’ve gathered links to many different text editors used for different purposes. You can use text editors for basic text editing and taking notes, writing programming code, producing LaTeX documents, writing a book, among many other uses.

Notepad and WordPad Replacements

Are you looking for more capabilities than the default Notepad in Windows? Would you rather use a graphical text editor in Linux, rather than the built-in vi? There are many options for useful text editors out there.

Some employ a tabbed interface, such as Jarte (which is based on the WordPad word processing engine and integrates easily with WordWeb), EditPad Lite (which also has the automatic backup), and Notetab Light (which can also calculate the value of mathematical expressions entered in the program). Jarte, EditPad Lite, and Notetab Light are all only available for Windows. Jarte is also available as a portable program.

Typically, Vi is the default text editor in Linux operating systems and it’s a keyboard intensive program with no graphical user interface (GUI). A good text editor for Windows that has hotkeys available for its 312 text-processing functions, innovative features, and timesaving tools is TED Notepad, which is also available as a portable program. Emacs is also available for both Windows and Linux, and is customizable. It also includes a file compare utility and a file manager. You can also add Org-mode to Emacs, which is a personal information management and outlining tool. If you prefer text editors with GUIs, Vim and gEdit are both good options and are available. Vim is essentially the graphical version of Vi. For help editing text files in Vi or Vim, see our Beginner’s Guide.

GetDiz is a Notepad replacement for Windows that allows you to edit many text files quickly from within Windows Explorer and has enhanced functionality for dealing with DIZ and NFO files. It can also display ASCII art correctly. Another ASCII text formatter for Windows is TextMorph, which can also convert text to and from HTML and clean up emails (remove all the “>” symbols, etc.), and search and replace by words or multiple paragraphs.

Programmer’s Text Editors

There are many text editors that provide useful functionality for programmers. Most support syntax highlighting for many programming languages, multiple document editing, and are extendable with plugins. Some also allow editing of remote files through FTP.

PSPad not only supports syntax highlighting, but also matching bracket highlighting for most popular programming languages. It also has a hex editor, macro recorder, and a differencing tool. PSPad also easily integrates with the free version of the TopStyle CSS editor. Notepad++ also supports bracket highlighting and macro recording. It also supports syntax folding and is highly customizable through plugins using the included plugin manager. Both PSPad and Notepad++ are only available for Windows.

The cross-platform (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X) editor, jEdit, supports syntax highlighting for over 200 programming languages and auto indent, as well as a differencing utility, an FTP browser, and block selecting. It is also extendable using plugins and macros, and there are hundreds of plugins and macros available through the built-in plugin manager feature.

Programmer’s Notepad for Windows supports syntax highlighting using schemes, both built-in and user-defined, code folding and outlining, a tabbed interface with multi-level split views, and the ability to export to HTML (using CSS) and RTF.

If you like the Vi editor in Linux, but prefer a graphical editor that also serves well as a programmer’s text editor, Editra and Komodo Edit are good options. They both provide Vi emulation, as well as support for syntax highlighting in many programming languages and code folding. Editra has a tabbed interface, allows block (un)commenting and (un)indenting, and is extendable using the built-in plugin downloader/installer. Komodo Edit supports background syntax checking and contains a toolbox with shell command integration, macros, and code snippets. Both Editra and Komodo Edit are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Other options include the following:

• Crimson Editor – A very small editor for Windows containing a directory tree view window
• Geany – A small and fast IDE for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X that supports code folding, code navigation, a build system, and a plugin interface
• Notepad2 – A fast, light-weight text editor like Notepad for Windows with syntax highlighting and runs as a portable program

Microsoft Word Replacements

There are also free programs that act as replacements for Microsoft Word. They can be used as text editors, but they have more formatting features than simple text editors. You can add images and tables, change fonts and color, and insert hyperlinks.

AbiWord runs on Windows and Linux and can read and write OpenOffice.org documents, Microsoft Word documents, WordPerfect documents, Rich Text Format documents, and HTML web pages. It has advanced document layout options such as tables, bullets, numbered lists, images, styles, footnotes, and endnotes. It even has a Mail Merge utility like Microsoft Word. You can extend AbiWord with a variety of plugins, which can be selected when you install AbiWord. A portable version is also available that you can run from a USB flash drive.

Angel Writer is a small rich text editor for Windows with a high performance rate that allows you to easily create impressive documents.

Minimalist Text Editors

If you get distracted when you write by the plethora of features in text editors and word processors, you might want to try one of the so-called “minimalist” text editors out there. They are “no-frills” editors that either don’t offer any formatting features or many of the other features of modern word processors, and even third-party text editors, or the features are hidden until you want them. Without all the fancy features staring you in the face, you can concentrate on the task of writing. Below is a list of some of the minimalist text editors we found.

• Dark Room– Available for Windows, requires .NET Framework 2.0, and is available as a portable program.
• JDarkRoom– Available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X
• Q10– Available for Windows and as a portable program
• CopyWriter– Available for Windows and as a portable program
• WriteMonkey– Available for Windows and as a portable program
• Bookwrite– Available for Windows and Linux
• Scribes– Available for Linux
• FocusWriter – Available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, and as a portable program for Windows

You can even download Word 5.5 from Microsoft for free and run it under DOSBox in Windows.

If you want a simple text editor with the ability to count down from a set word count, try yEdit2 for Windows. If you have to write a certain number of words, yEdit2 can make it easier.

Secure Text Editors

You can also use a text editor as secure place to store private information. There are several text editors that either include encryption as a feature or are specially designed for securely storing text. Notepad++, mentioned in the Programmer’s Text Editors section above, allows you to add encryption functionality using the SecurePad plugin, which is available through the Plugin Manager. SecurePad will encrypt selected text in the current document or the whole document.

Steganos LockNote is a small, simple method for securely storing chunks of information in files. For example, if you purchase a download-only program, you can use LockNote to store the product key or serial number that goes with that program in the same folder, so you always know where to find it.

• CryptNote – Available for Windows and as a portable program
• CryptoTE– Available for Windows and Linux, and as a portable program for Windows
• NotepadCrypt– Available for Windows as a portable program
• Xint– Available for Windows
• f0dder’s fSekrit – Available for Windows and as a portable program

LaTeX Editors

Do you write a lot of scientific papers, documents, or books? If so, there are several text editors that allow you to easily use TeX/LaTeX (document markup language and document preparation system) through a graphical interface to create mathematical content and structured documents like academic articles, theses, and books.

• LaTeX Editor (LEd)– Available for Windows and as a portable program
• LyX– Available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X
• WinEdt– Available for Windows
• TeXstudio– Available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X and as a portable program on Windows and Mac OS X
• Texmaker – Available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X

Novel Writing Editor

There’s even an editor that’s meant for writing novels, called yWriter5, available for Windows and Linux. It breaks your novel into chapters and scenes, helping you to keep track of your work. However, yWriter5 does not suggest plot ideas, character names, or write any part of your novel for you. The creative task of writing is still up to you, yWriter5 just makes it easier.

One more text editor to mention is Nano in Linux, which is an easy-to-use text editor you run directly on the command line. Nano is installed by default in Ubuntu and many other Linux distros, and is easier to learn than Vi or emacs.

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Coding is great fun. You can make useful and great apps for your operating system if you can learn well how to do coding. To be a great applications developer, you have to know about all the details of coding or programming in various applications. There are various types of code editors or text editors or HTML editors for several operating systems which are available to make your coding capability easy and quick, while some of them have worked great across the OS. To create new software in Linux, there are lots of Linux code editor available out there; those can make you an expert Linux code developer.

IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) or code editors are amazing and great for building new program or apps with tons of handy features. We are here to make a list of the top 10 best Linux code editors, which come to us with such features like, auto-complete tags, and classes, plugins to have extra capabilities, and even the bits and pieces of code without having to type it.

Best Linux Code Editor: Top 10 Reviewed

Here we are coming with the best 10 Linux Code Editors with their review and comparison. These 10 are the best and most popular Linux Text Editor with distinctive features for the Linux operating system.

1. Atom – Linux code editor

Atom is a Linux code editor that is smart, trendy, approachable, and yet customizable to the core. This excellent Linux text editor offers you to customize it to do anything you want. With cross-platform editing features, built-in package manager, smart and modern autocompletion tags feature and file system browser; this one denotes as one of the best code editors for Linux. It also supports multiple panes and finds and replace function.

How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

How to Remove

2. Brackets – Linux HTML Editor

Brackets is an open-source Linux code editor for web designing and development which is made by some top web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This HTML editor is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

Brackets Linux HTML editor has many great features such as cross-platform editing, live preview, inline editors, and preprocessor support; SCSS and LESS. This Linux HTML editor has some great extensions support including Emmet, Indent Guides, W3C Validation, etc.

How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

How to Remove

3. Sublime Text 3 – An Amazing Text Editor

Sublime Text 3 for Ubuntu is an amazing text editor for coding, markup, and style. Sublime Text Editor allows for code highlighting and better presentation. It also has a custom regex engine that significantly speeds up file indexing and loading.

The command palette feature of sublime code editor offers access to frequently used features like sorting, changing the arrangement and changing the indentation settings. Sublime Text is highly customizable. You can customize everything with simple JSON files such as Menus, Macros, Key Bindings, Snippets, Completions, etc.

How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

How to Remove

4. Vim (Free – GNU Compatible) Code Editor

Vim is one of the most successful and best code editors of UNIX. Vim is most likely same as the Vi, but it has better features than it. Vim is a highly customizable Linux text editor, built to create and change any kind of text very effectively.

You can edit or create your Linux software with this easily. This Linux code editor also supports multiple plugins and hundreds of old and modern file formats and programming languages.

How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

How to Remove

5. Gedit – Integrated Development Environment

Gedit is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which comes preinstalled as the default code editor for the GNOME desktop environment on Linux. This Linux text editor is created for the general purpose and aims at efficiency and simplicity. Gedit has come into the light on 2000; first release, while it is written in C programming language.

Read More: Best 5 Linux Distros for Developers and Programmers

This open source free Text Editor comes with complete support for the internationalized text. Gedit offers you with customizable syntax highlighting for several widely used programming languages such as C, C++, HTML, JavaScript, XML, Python, Perl, and other modern languages. Users can also edit the file in remote place. It provides an option for Clipboard facility (cut/copy/paste)

How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

6. Bluefish – Linux HTML Editor

If you are a newbie in the world of Linux web developer, then Bluefish Linux code editor can be a great choice. Bluefish is a code editor that designed for various operating systems like Linux, Mac-OS, Windows, Solaris and other Linux distros.

This best Linux HTML editor offers some great and advanced features such as support of integration of external programs, auto-completion of tags and classes, auto-indentation, installing additional plug-ins, etc. This Linux code editor has a neat and clean, lightweight graphical user interface which is very useful for the beginners to start coding on Linux.

Unlike other best code editors of Linux, it also supports multiple external programs such as Lint, Web-lint, XML-lint, Javac, Tidy. One very important feature of this fantastic code editor is auto-recoverer the data after certain system crash or shutdown.

How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

7. CodeLite – Linux Code Editor

CodeLite is an IDE which is free, open-source, and supports cross-platform. This code editor offers some most used programming languages like C, C++, PHP, and JavaScript. CodeLite is developed keeping in mind of the widely used platforms such as Windows, MacOS-X, and Linux.

This code editor for Linux has some great and useful features like refactoring, source control plugins, code navigation, etc. It supports RAD (Rapid Application Development) Tool, LLDB Next Generation Debugger, several compilers, shows errors as code glossary and much more.

How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

How to Remove

8. Eclipse – IDE

Eclipse is one of the best open-source, cross-platform Linux code editors in today’s programming world. This widely used IDE offers its users a great GUI with support for drag and drops functionality for easy and quick composition of UI elements. With source navigation, Eclipse also supports for syntax highlighting.

Read More: Top 5 Best Lightweight Linux Distros To Boost Up Your Old Computer

This app provides several knowledge tools including Call-graph, Type-hierarchy, Built-in Browser, etc. It supports folding and hyperlink navigation. Users can make a project and edit later on easily. Visual debugging is also possible with this amazing code editor.

How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

• First, install Ubuntu make on your system:

• Run the following command for Eclipse IDE for Java Developers:

• Run the following command for Eclipse IDE for Java Enterprise edition Developers:

• Run the following command for Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developer:

• Run the following command for Eclipse for PHP Developers:

9. Code::Blocks – Code Editor

Code::Blocks is free but highly customizable and extensible, cross-platform code editor that offers the most demanded and ideal features. For its consistent UI, it has become one of the most renowned C++ code editors for all the major platform. The most important feature of this code editor is that it permits users to use various plugins easily both written by Code::Blocks and individual developers.

This Linux code editor loads the file fast and smoothly. It supports several compilers including GCC, C++ 5.5, Clang, Borland, etc. There are many great features of this Linux code editor including multi-target projects, workspace support, display local functions symbols, syntax highlighting, custom memory dump and much more.

How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

C++ Editor Download

10. Geany – Linux Text Editor

Geany is a great IDE that used for the GTK+ tool-kit integration to provide an excellent development environment. If you are searching for a Linux code editor that works more like an IDE, Geany could be the perfect one for your system.

This lightweight code editor for Linux supports all the major and modern programming languages with fewer dependencies from other combinations. The key features of Geany are a pluggable and configurable user interface, syntax highlighting, line numbering, etc.

Free C++ Editor For Windows

While it has a simple UI and plenty of configurable features, the developers had written it in C and C++ programming language. You can do a lot more task with this great Linux code editor including auto-completion tags, code navigation, code folding, symbol listing, project management, etc.

How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

Honorable Mention

Visual Studio Code

Now I am including Visual studio code editor in this top list as an honorable mention. After publishing this piece of content, many users have sent me a request to include this code editor. So the question may come, why I didn’t include this one while publishing the content?

The answer is, like many other Linux users, I also don’t like Microsoft programs as they don’t support open source application development. But it seems that this time the thing has been changed with Microsoft and now they are supporting many open source software developments including this one. So why do I leave something that offers great help for open source developer?

Best Free C++ Editor

Visual Studio Code is completely open source code editing software for Linux. And frankly telling, it has lots of amazing and effective features which help both the newbie and advanced developer to create and maintain the project efficiently.

This app is lightweight and good for web development. Mainly it supports auto-completion and useful hints while coding, built-in extension managers, integrated Terminal, debugging tools, and overall offers an easy way to code in a huge number of programming languages.

Final Thought

Now I can’t say which one is the best Linux code editor because it depends on how a user uses it for his/her certain task. I recommend you to justify all the features of the code editors for Linux and compare and find which one helps you to complete your requirements. We consider there features and ease of use to rate them and pick them in our top pick list.