Announcing The Pulsar Text Editor (Continuing the Legacy of Atom)

[@Ethorbit]

I loved Atom over VSCode, but its sunset gave me the push I needed to finally switch to vim.

[@darukutsu]

And now switch to neovim since most of the new, usefull plugins are being written in lua.

[@sfyatee]

@@darukutsu i use fennel with aniseed in neovim. very fun learning a lisp while learning how to config nvim.

[@brunoais]

I went to vscodium instead

[@raptoress6131]

Hey me too! Except the new Vimscript came shortly after, so I quickly switched to Neovim. I love it!

[@explcomexplorer8417]

@@sfyateeyou should make a video on that

[@mondofps]

I was never an Atom guy, and am very happy with Vim, but I love what the community is doing with Pulsar.

[@Parker8752]

Agreed. The idea of a "javascript emacs" sounds legitimately cool. I'll probably give it a try, but I doubt it'll replace neovim for me just because I like having my editor look very similar between opening it in the terminal and opening it as a gui application (using neovide).

[@miguelguthridge]

I'm a massive VS Code fan but I'm very happy to see Atom will stay alive - keeping alternatives alive means that we'll keep innovating!

[@DylanMatthewTurner]

I use Neovim these days and before that mainly VS Code, but I tried Atom for a while, and it's a pretty nice project. Glad to see they're keeping it alive

[@heroe1486]

I've used Atom a bit and it seems it seemed to me that it was basically VScode but slower, way slower, and VScode itself isn't that fast. But I must say I haven't used it that much. Anyway that's good that we have a GUI editor like that that's open source and run by the community and not MS

[@ioneocla6577]

I really liked atom because of it's similarities with emacs. Everything is a package in JavaScript like how in emacs everything is an elisp function. Sure, it's slower but it's also easier for a lot of people

[@Being_Joe]

Atom was nice but VSCode felt like a natural progression. I been working with AstroNvim as of late and I do like it. To each their own.

[@sardineBro]

I’m so happy this exists! Thanks for letting me know! Atom is my fave editor

[@arcooke]

I have a video suggestion for ya, Derek: Consider all the basic desktop utilities that get installed when you install a standard DE metapackage. You typically get things like a calculator, file manager, music player, video player, pdf viewer, image viewer, spreadsheet editor, etc. The experiment would be to build your own fully-functional daily-driver environment almost exclusively from the command line, using only TUI (Terminal User Interfaces, like ncurses, FINAL CUT, etc) applications and framebuffer tools instead of GUI applications. There are TUI applications for many common desktop tasks (file managers, calculators, etc). Use X only when absolutely necessary, like for a web browser (although some interesting alternatives exist here too, like Browsh). You could even theoretically replace pdf viewer and image viewer with "fbida" to view these files, and VLC has ncurses mode if you run "vlc -I ncurses" and mplayer with "-vo fbdev2" option, making rich media entirely possible from a TTY. There's a lot of really neat software options out there. I think it would be a fun experiment to see how far you could get with it and explore a lot of obscure command line tools. There's a project called "Awesome TUIs" on github that maintains a collection of TUI applications that might help to get started

[@sergioruocco6181]

I am looking for something like that for C/C++ embedded software development, testing and debugging. All the nice editors, debuggers, file managers and text manipulation tools, famous and obscure ones, all packaged in a single meta-package or at least grouped in a category to select and get installed.

[@dakujem]

Why would you do that to yourself? It's 2023.

[@sergioruocco6181]

@@dakujem embedded development

[@jamiebradley2505]

Thanks for posting this video DT. I've been looking for an open-source project to contribute to. I made my first contribution to this project the other night and will continue to do so, it's a neat project 👍

[@PenguinRevolution]

I'm a Huge Atom fan and I use it all the time. I'm glad the project isn't dying. I'll do a video about it.

[@BoopyTheFox]

I remember the exact moment Atom packages stopped installing. It was quite emotionally difficult to switch to VSCodium cuz at the moment i relied on ssh-based "remote-edit" plugin, and ssh is quite broken on open version of vscode. Switched to just mounting sshfs and editing locally, quite happy with that change too.

[@AndersJackson]

Emacs have the tramp-addition which make Emacs edit remote files (or root own files) as local files. C-x C-f /ssh:user@machine:file will open the file from the user at machine.

[@SureshGururajan]

Awesome! Looks like Pulsar really listened. They now have a donate button upfront on their website :)

[@Daeraxia]

We implemented it approx two or three hours after the video came out :)

[@James-on1vy]

I refuse to use ANYTHING made by Microsoft, so this is refreshing. I've been on Doom Emacs for over a year. I could see myself also using Pulsar

[@heroe1486]

Thanks for the video, always nice to put light on open source projects, they're certainly courageous to maintain such a project. Atom and VScode aren't full blown IDEs like Jetbrains' ones tho, they're extensible text editors but still less minimal than vim ootb for sure. Open collective is kinda popular in the open source community tho, I guess most devs are comfortable with it and that's their main target audience.

[@r.radib.r]

was looking for an Atom alternative, thank you so much for showcasing Pulsar

[@nevoyu]

Open Collective is the largest centralized funding service for open source projects, I'm actually surprised you didn't know it existed.

[@perc-ai]

he is not a programmer much

[@sirrobertdowneysenior8080]

The sound my computer makes whenever I start electron app is scary and anyone can go nutz hearing those is the reason of hate towards electron . Beyond that all the best wishes for Pulsar / atom team. 👍

[@yothebob8162]

I use to love atom, when I heard about the sunset I took the dive to switch to emacs and I have never looked back. I am happy they are bringing back another great alternative to using VSCode

[@anon_y_mousse]

Sure, an open source project never completely dies, but something is lost in each new fork. Using Linux for 20+ years I've seen it happen a few times, and aside from things being lost, it also sometimes means a well chosen name gets replaced with garbage. Maybe that's not such a concern with most, but it's kind of a barrier to entry when you're looking for a word processor and you can't find one because instead of being named kword it's calligra. On a side note, you'll have to pry vim from my cold, dead hands.

[@amiraloi1694]

I really think that the reason behind the rise of canocial and the reason that firefox is going down is sth about business and marketing. We need to make developers understand that if they want to succeed a big project they need to have one marketer in their group.

[@raz0rr0b]

I use atom at work for light duty editing of gcode files for cnc machines. Had everything I needed syntax highlighting, regex and a nice split diff setup. Glad there are some folks picking this up. Great video. 👍

[@sunnyheheheh9401]

nice to see creators helping FOSS grow

[@nalle475]

Nice to se Atom get it’s freedom as Pulsar. Used it for some time then tried VS and then struck with Sublime and now back to plain git. I will give it a try to see if it works for me. Thanks for a good video.

[@wedge_one]

I called it! Back on your original video that the community would pick the project and continue supporting since it's FOSS. I'm really happy to hear about this project! I use and I like ATOM, it's the free alternative for Sublime.

[@otto415]

While I like we are having an alternative to VSCode, I feel we need an alternative that is not based in electron due to consuming a lot of resources, I know we now have computers with lots of RAM, I would love that they would make better use of the resources of my PC :P.

[@Daeraxia]

There are. Zed, Lapce, Lite-XL, CudaText to name a few but they are different projects with very different goals to Pulsar.

[@dermond]

I learned about Atom because of Ren'Py, I guess that now that Atom is dead they'll recommend Pulsar instead

[@matnard]

Hey DT I think you're a UX designer in the heart

[@kdemetter]

You had me at "javascript emacs"

[@ogre14t1979]

They need to start having crypto donations as well.

[@Spaxly]

Even though I didn't use Atom frequently, I'm glad that it won't die.

[@cameronmoore136]

As someone who plans to go fully open source, I completely support ads. Just not how we're currently doing them. They're invasive. But it doesn't have to be. If you're on a website about computer parts, you can show tech or even software related ads (or generic ads). If you're watching a video on gaming you can show ads for other games (or anime). Ads very well can be a non-invasive thing. And they allow us to access content without paying for it. Ads, as a concept, are great. Our current implementation is just wrong.

[@ApophisProminence]

I really like Atom and I hope Pulsar goes well. Nowadays I am investing my time more in Thea, though.

[@FlinterWoof]

I was so sad when I heard Atom had it's sunset, happy to hear it's legacy will continue.

[@carldrogo9492]

Your Southern accent is sick. 🔥🔥🔥

[@denizkendirci]

it actually looks nice. i generally use sublime or geany for a gui text editor (and obsidian for markdown), but i think i'll try this one out.

[@sebaszwarc]

I wish someone (maybe me) write Obsidian in Swift instead of doing electron app

[@denizkendirci]

@@sebaszwarc yeah, electron apps are great shortcuts to bring things into linux, otherwise it would be tedious to bring. but they also lack of advantages of being a native desktop app. so i think it's a great place for an app to start its journey as an electron app, but after sometime it would be wiser to continue its journey as a desktop app.

[@sebaszwarc]

@@denizkendirci Apple makes programming for MacOS very difficult last few years, they would likely cut all OS versions except the last one but the latest are always buggy so I am still on Mojave. Obsidian competitor Notion is also electron and too complex to use it properly imo

[@denizkendirci]

@@sebaszwarc i'm not a dev myself and i also don't use mac so i cannot say that i know much about swift but if you are up for the task, i'm sure mac community will appreciate your effort.

[@sebaszwarc]

@@denizkendirci My experience is that communiy never appreciate your effort

[@KR1ML0N]

Glad I'm not the only one that liked atom. Gonna have to try this.

[@christosangelopoulos]

Yay! Good news!

[@VulcanOnWheels]

I have used Atom in the past, but since I became a fulltime Linux user, I've been using Vim for all plain text files.

[@davebrowning9290]

Glad to hear about this fork of Atom. I've dabbled in Emacs over the years, but I'm still using nano for my Linux text editing needs. I think it's high time I left nano behind, but didn't really want to move to Emacs, and I definitely don't want to switch to vi. So I may give Pulsar a try when I get a chance.

[@act.13.41]

Give Micro a try. You just might like it.

[@spht9ng]

Actually using nano as a primary text editor? now that's hardcore

[@Cross-fr8st]

You should check deadpixi/sam out! Really capable text editor.

[@sebaszwarc]

Emacs was always too dangerous to use for the wrists

[@heroe1486]

@@BobAg_ Nano and Atom ? I think we can agree that you have strange tastes haha

[@haquire]

I loved Atom for the time I used it, but now my combination of Neovim & Emacs works much better for me.

[@williambreeze2659]

Thanks for this!

[@LG51hacker]

I love atom happy to see it. Immedieatly downloaded AUR binary.

[@Cavi587]

I jump from one enviroment to another pretty often, when I'm doiong something quite small but it requires a bit more than default vim configuration cam give me - I use VS Codium. It's basically VSC with Microsoft telemetry removed. Really like it, but it's still an editor made with electron which is less than ideal, but works for quick things.

[@v01d_r34l1ty]

It was only a matter of time before Atom would be revived by the community.

[@FlooferLand]

I never really liked Atom because of how "unhackable" it felt to me, being named the "hackable text editor". I attempted several times to make my own plugins for it but it was a nightmare because of how messy Atom's documentation was, and even trying to find the plugins i wanted didn't really end that well. Hearing the fact they're trying to make the best documentation they possibly can for it, and all of the changes they've done to it so far. I am pretty excited for it ngl

[@thecakeredux]

Great news. I like Atom, but the MS thing bugged me a lot.

[@bogdanlupu3679]

Finally a new Atom. I wonder if the extensions of atom works in pulsar. I make VNs in renpy and they have pretty good extension for atom.

[@jgttech]

I LOVE this. I am so excited to use Pulsar! I want to make it my MAIN IDE.

[@gajeet6745]

How to get this sound when bringing up the rofi and the chezzy sound effect 4:23 ?

[@avalagum7957]

It reminds me of Apache Pulsar which came after Apache Kafka which is very popular.

[@DasIllu]

Looked up Atom again in Mint. 3.8GB Flatpack. I really hope this won't be the same Moloch.

[@maybeanonymous6846]

Flatpaks contain all the dependencies that are probably already on your system, on Artix the editor itself (pulsar-bin) is ~700mb, which isn't that good but it's alright

[@briankiama5402]

Anyone know what the default font is. Ive typed default in the font family tab, and I like it but don't know what its called?

[@arianitonline8748]

few months or maybe a year ago, someone on reddit pointed me to a project of the OG authors of atom. they were working on a native (not electron) cross platform successor of atom. but since then I lost it and can't find this project anymore

[@therealdia]

Ayyyyyyy that’s me lol

[@curls6778]

that’s some great news! Looking forward to an alternative to vs code :)

[@patrickmclaughlin6013]

Thanks DT Do you ever do ocr? tesseractc looks amazing but figuring out the command line is very challenging

[@sourav-zu1te]

exactly what I was waiting for 😃

[@RyszardRudy]

It's cool, but personally I don't see much point of it. I remember when Atom just came out and it was cool and all - the introduction of Electron, but since it's was JS bases it rand quite slow for me to the point I started to look for something with more faster response and does not take few seconds to load some dialogs (or whatever it was). So I switched to SublimeText as my editor. Even it lacked some features, it didn't get in my way. Why not Atom users try something more next gen instead then? Like I heard Atom creators are now making a new editor called Zed.

[@DarkGladiator]

I have never used atom before but I'll give this a try

[@dllsmartphone3214]

im usually not microsoft fan but i worked with both atom and vscode for years. first vscode was bad back in time for me so i used atom. then atom was getting worst over vscode. now im on vscode for about 1 year again and its a way better then atom now. atom was getting too slow and laggy for me on larger projects.

[@DanteMishima]

Have we fixed the RAM consumption?

[@TBechs]

yay

[@Shockwaveo]

4:59 what file manager is this ?

[@v300]

Nothing beats KDEVELOP IDE.

[@berahtlv]

I've dropped Atom in favour of VSCode a few years ago because of python code debugging, but still using Atom theme.

[@mathewkane5634]

I tried it out on a few computers after watching this video; a Windows 10 machine, my personal desktop running Ubuntu 20.04LTS, and my Google Pixelbook. Ran fine on Win10 and ChromeOS, failed to load on 20.04 due to a GPU error?? It's not quite there yet. If I were a more experienced programmer I would help code it. As a user, the functionality and polish isn't there enough for me to contribute monetarily... It would be nice to see a competitor to VSCode, but that's what I'm going to use until something better comes along. I would set up VIM the same as my VSCode, but the major hurdle I have is switching modes, I like using my mouse. Having to think about what mode I'm in makes me slower on keyboard-only input.

[@SB-qm5wg]

I LOVED Atom!

[@jorgealberto1851]

it would be really good if they focused on making it lightweight.

[@jt8244-i6u]

Can you create a video about some DevOps topic's? For example "infrastructure as Code"? I would like to hear your opinion on those concepts.

[@kdemetter]

Unfortunately, it crashes for me, stating '"GPU process isn't usable" . I'll try to figure out how to fix it , will post it here for anyone else having the problem

[@kdemetter]

Found it, it's a problem with nvidia. Run it with: pulsar --disable-gpu-sandbox

[@Daeraxia]

@@kdemetter This should actually be fixed in the latest binaries so you shouldn't need that command, at least with the .deb and .rpm. You can also use --no-sandbox

[@davidjackson7675]

Did they say you can think of it as JavaScript Emacs?

[@v300]

Did they move over to GitLAB or they're still on GitHUB?

[@justinchan8868]

anyone came across error node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:943 throw err; ^ anyone know how to get around it and install any packages at all? or am I missing something?

[@rainyonrecord]

been using vscode (windows) & neovim (mac) for a while, looking forward to pulsar for a swap to vscode and a mac text editor called code edit (like xcode but for all languages xcode+vscode) to replace neovim

[@kamilkhursandov9145]

thanks for video... Keep working with Vim :)

[@DEVDerr]

Is there any solid argument for sticking with Atom rather than switching to VSCode?

[@maybeanonymous6846]

They're different text editors

[@marktaylor865]

The community? You mean a million geeks that don't like using a different editor. I still use notepad++ and I bet my code is as good as anyone's.

[@zoltantoth1566]

Thanks no. I am not going to Electron again if i do not have to.

[@sachindraragul1094]

I knew atom is extremely customizable compared to vscode. But how well is it hackable compared to Emacs?

[@welcometooaudioland7877]

Will Atom software work on pulsar? Could I run Vega?

[@joatmor]

I don't do electron so I guess its Neovim for now

[@genkiferal7178]

I upgraded from Debian 11 to 12 and that broke a few things for me - VirtualBox, bluetooth drivers, something else, and Atom. Not finding a decent AppImage for Atom. I wanna cry. I use markdown and Atom does that well enough and I get to have 3 files side by side instead of tabs where I can't see all at once.

[@genkiferal7178]

well, i test 2 of my other AppImages and they still worked, but Pulsar and the Atom 1.06 or 1.6 didn't work and yes i did the necessary steps - permissions and all. Pulsar's says I need a driver and the other said something about changing true or false in Electron.

[@crifox16]

what theme is he using in the editor? seen that one a few times but never understood what it is

[@Daeraxia]

Its the one used as standard, one-dark (UI and syntax)

[@crifox16]

@@Daeraxia why do the vscode one dark themes look nothing like this? :v kinda confused

[@Daeraxia]

@@crifox16 Assuming you mean the syntax theme, that would just be down to their interpretation of it. The "One" themes started with Atom and were well liked so have been copied and modified to a bunch of other editors. There will also be differences on syntax highlighting keywords that will cause the highlights to be different. "Atom One Dark Theme" seems to be more similar to the original than "One Dark Pro"

[@crifox16]

@@Daeraxia yeah well i don't know if it's down to syntax highlight of the specific language he's using here but all the vscode one dark theme ports i tried had more of that purple-orange-green tint i see everywhere, while here it looks more purple-lightblue-green... guess i'll have to look harder :v

[@Daeraxia]

@@crifox16 Pulsar detected he is using bash/shell script so that is what it has highlighted but when I compared the javascript highlights too I noticed that there are also some subtle differences between the VSC themes and the original. It is almost certainly to do with the syntax parsing and highlightable keywords.

[@mallock8529]

Other than the fact it wasn't being maintained that well for years the biggest issue I had with atom was CoffeeScript. Are they getting rid of that?

[@Daeraxia]

Yup, lots of decaffeination going on as we speak

[@driden1987]

"a javascript emacs" definitely sounds interesting !

[@pear_apr]

Finally

[@darkmaster7443]

Hey! Dt! your text editors are console based.. like VIM............. please don't try that I'am an follower of yours and think text terminal based is ... let's stay over there, thanks for you content, happy new early year

[@cbbcbb6803]

Should we tide ourselves over with atom before it goes away? I use geany and like. But I am willing to give others a try.

[@wheezybackports6444]

Why would I use a text editor that takes 5 minutes to load?

[@Daeraxia]

Can't say I know, the good news is that Pulsar only takes a few seconds.

[@Redyf]

Make a video about Hyprland

[@raiton2005]

Atom was the first text editor i used a year ago when i was learning C. rn i use neovim but i still like atom :( . i dont like that vscode tries to end their competition. id rather use vscodium

[@praetorxyn]

The one time I tried Atom it just seemed incredibly bloated and slow. VS Code seems so much lighter weight and faster.

[@ahmedsat4780]

interesting 🤔🤔🤔

[@FekuEntertainmentLtd]

Funny how microsoft discontinued atom and now the project is hosted on github ( which is again owned by microsoft )😀

[@andrejbartulin]

Only good in Atom is that is has non vs code ui

[@mtothem1337]

I want a small graphical editor for taking quick notes. that starts quickly. This might fit that role.

[@amdival1823]

I like Typora

[@kpcraftster6580]

Paypall and Patreon are not good choices for anyone who loves freedom

[@mkd1964]

Agreed. Any company that thinks it can simply cancel you (not to mention FINE you) for not having the "correct opinion" on something, needs to be boycotted. I don't care what side of the political spectrum you're on, that is not the business of financial institutions or payment processors.

It's still javascript/electron rubbish.

[@proob1806]

Hey dt, Love from India 🔥 🔥 I just switched from vscodium to neovim ( it's awesome). I have not used atom but this project is interesting🙂 I am having a problem with bspwm, whenever a pop up window is opened, like save as window or open window, it is too big for my screen and it can not be resized I tried to Google it but could not find any solution... Can you please give some suggestion...😔

[@myegane49]

thank god I can finally leave vim