The Text Editor Tier List (Open Source Editors ONLY!)

[@schnitzelsemmel]

the truly evil move is that the thumbnail tier list has nothing to do with the actual video😂

[@flip4119]

I was definitley a little heated lol

[@peterhutt4807]

this kind of clickbait is so sad

[@Winnetou17]

@@peterhutt4807 Why sad ? I actually like that I don't have the surprise spoiled.

[@Zesuto3]

I love how one just knows it's a joke thumbnail.

[@samsowden]

I was so ready to unsubscribe. Loudly.

[@moistness482]

Making these tier lists in gimp is truly a chad move

[@sniperwolf50]

Personally I'd prefer a tier list made in groff, but to each their own

[@urugulu1656]

image magic ftw

[@bvbianca]

GIMP is the most based image editing tool

[@KoltPenny]

Not LaTeX? Shame on you

[@CjqNslXUcM]

he should have added the editor's logos as layers and dragged them around

[@TechHut]

Your meh is my great

[@superslime16th]

I'd put kate in a good or great category. I see some people mistake it for kwrite. Kate is an advanced text editor, it has git integration out of the box, code autocompletion, vi mode, built-in terminal. While from your description I'd only think about kwrite, which is a simple, standard text editor

[@heliokieras73pequenasmaos]

Kate is in the same side of Notepadqq

[@afanhaqulfadillah6992]

@@heliokieras73pequenasmaos Absolutely not, it has so much more features with plugins, by default

[@82NeXus]

I'm not convinced gedit should be that far down the list either, having heard other people say great things about it.

[@jenn6374]

i agree i love kate 🤌

[@linux_fox]

Nano deserves OK tier since even a goldfish could figure out how to use it. It's so simple to use

[@kendarr]

Agree, and it usually comes with the distros, try micro if you can you'll probably like it

[@linux_fox]

@cheese True but don't do my homie nano wrong like that

[@Doonutzs]

I know it's very simple :C but it just works

[@pixl_xip]

Yea, it's hated enough already

[@webarnesca]

VSCode has one amazing benefit: you can install it in Windows without administrator rights. Closest thing I can get to vim on my work computer.

[@ecavero1]

I installed Vim on Windows using WSL and installing Ubuntu first. It was not my machine, and I had to use .NET, so I went through all the hassle.

[@MuscleTeamOfficial]

I second the NeoVim on WSL2. Ur already using VSCode, well guess what? U can get VSCode to directly work with files in WSL. Even type 'code file.name' and vscode will open on windows with that file. Also able to access docker containers on windows from WSL. Lots of other magic too.

[@Suddhadeep]

VSCode is not open source fully. VSCodium was not considered, hence not in the video.

[@phillipanselmo8540]

@@Suddhadeep vs code is open source but distributed with proprietary binaries, which is why vscodium exists

[@androth1502]

why not use neovim for windows? it also comes with neovim-qt if you don't have access to a terminal. vscode is a great editor, once you get past the initial loadup time for electron. after electron is cached though, i'd put it in the great category. emacs for windows is in the good category because it gets pretty slow once you start installing plugins. much slower than vscode with a bunch of plugins. if emacs ever goes multi-core it could start punching at a higher weight class. i use a combination of vs, vscode and savageed and hide but the last two are my own, so i'm biased.

[@0__alfie__0]

Even though this is your opinion I think Kate was underrated as it comes with a lot more by default than you think for example it has a console, themes and a folder view and overall it is much more "featuresome"

[@TheRealisticNihilist]

I think that kate is a little low, though I agree with most of your assessments. It's not because it has a bunch of features or anything, but one thing it really does well is integrate with kde, so if you're on a plasma system, and I am, it's probably a great editor for you. I use emacs myself, but I can see a pull to using kate.

[@RenderingUser]

true for me id put it on at least 'good' its really convenient i use a lot of kde apps even tho i havent used kde plasma for a while and Kate has some really good support for language syntax out of the box im still learning neovim so Kate is my go to editor whenever i feel lost in nvim

[@HinaraT]

Not only that but in term of default functionalities it has way more than gedit, so I think putting it at the same height that gedit is way too unfair, as it is more like a notepad++ experience

[@hendrix4597]

Yea that surprises me since Kate has quite bunch of features. For example LSP support, code completion, Vi input-mode, snippets, compare, project and session management, some plugins, embedded terminal, split views.

[@RenderingUser]

@@hendrix4597 tru it is completely overpowered while also being pretty lightweight

[@rizkyadiyanto7922]

@@hendrix4597 he definitely mistaken it for kwrite. kwrite is the one that looks more like notepad. kate is kde "advanced" text editor.

[@mentalmarvin]

I think DT confused Kate with Kwrite. Kate is a powerful code editor with LSP and git integration.

[@exnihilonihilfit6316]

I was thinking the same thing... saying that for Kate is ridiculous.

[@mentalmarvin]

@@exnihilonihilfit6316 A "plain limiting text editor like gedit".. Just no. The Asahi Linux guy use it as a real IDE on his streams porting m1 macs to linux.

[@exnihilonihilfit6316]

@@mentalmarvin Also, it's a bit silly putting it down because of what is partly Gedit's POINT: having fewer features! _THAT's why_ GNOME and many distros have it as default! They know power users will install whatever they want. Is it really a quality critique? Or is it a number-of-features ranking?! Same with nano and vi. He may be a bit confused...

[@guilherme5094]

It's exactly what I was thinking.

[@iflooder06]

Also Kate has *the* feature he praised about Notepadqq to put it two tiers above Kate: it doesn't warn about unsaved files when closing the window, even "untitled" ones, and restores everything in the same state on next launch so you can finally save or discard changes or whatever. It's just that this is not enabled by default. I use Kate and it works like that, after years used to Notepad++ which has the same feature.

[@cattohappy9263]

NeoVim even though being a fork of Vim has lot more feature. Using Lua alone allows you to develop Lua plugins that can't run on Vim. Furthermore, thanks to Lua NeoVim is starting to ship a "standard library" specific to it Also it supports TreeSitter for syntax highlighting and has a built-in LSP client.

[@bstar777777]

I've moved to using LunarVim which is an IDE layer for NeoVim and it's just incredible. It give me feature parity with VSCode with all the benefits of using Vim. It's projects like this where NeoVim really shines.

[@cattohappy9263]

@@bstar777777 yeah I believe that it must be great, although I'm not an "IDE layer" guy, mainly because I like to configure everything from scratch and know what each component do for simplicity (even though my config doesn't look that minimal)

[@bstar777777]

@@cattohappy9263 I get that, I use LunarVim for development and a custom NeoVim for regular usage. If you are going to convince people to move away from vscode, the solution has to support IDE-like features.

[@osascaino]

“Ed is the standard text editor.” Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all. ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!! When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a “viitor”. Not a “emacsitor”. Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!! TEXT EDITOR. When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their “edlin” on a Unix standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard. Ed is for those who can remember what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE SO-CALLED “VISUAL” EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!!

[@nikolayhidalgodiaz9463]

😂 good stuff! Sorry, I should say the STANDARD stuff!

[@afanhaqulfadillah6992]

wtf

[@alexandershendi7428]

You beat me to it.

[@ordinarryalien]

Hail Ed! Hail the standard! Hail Ed! Hail the standard! Ed is the path! We are on the path! Ed is the path! We are on the path!

[@kansnex]

Hail Ed! Hail the standard! exit quit q wq . exit ? ^C ? ^X ? q

[@mizhimo]

Kate is far better than Geany and Notepadqq. Kate is simple out of the box, but if you want could be a powerful IDE for a lot of languages. One of the best GUI text editors out there.

[@UliTroyo]

I've been a Vim user for years, but I've never been a power user, even with Neovim. So I switched to a new editor called Helix this year, and so far I'm extremely happy with it. It's a Vim-like, but with a lot of the niceties of nvim/vim plugins built in (like Vim Surround). I'm probably going to stick with Helix-it's so fast and effortless.

[@mke7605]

Agreed, I’m playing around with it the last few weeks. Still had some issues and missing features, which prevents me from really using it as my daily driver. But it’s improving fast and soon I guess it will be good enough.

I use neovim, but I following helix progress, is a good editor( download and for many languages all features work out of the box without any config for start programming, is not perfect for now but has future)

[@TechTekker]

I've been playing arround with helix recently, and am (most likely) switching from neovim. can't wait for a plugin system, so I can get hacking :D

[@gettriggered_ian3269]

@@TechTekker thats cool. Curious, I use neovim as well. What made you want to switch? Since there are so many alternatives like kakoune, what makes Helix special

[@blackbeard3449]

@@gettriggered_ian3269 helix has kakoune like keybindings but most importantly it comes pre-installed with lsp support, a which key like help system and other sensible defaults, it is useable from start and i don't have to install something like Doom Emacs, Spacevim or write my own config file for the most basic features

[@johnq4951]

I think you're mixing up Kate with KWrite. KWrite is Kate without the xtra useful bits which make Kate almost an IDE.

[@heliokieras73pequenasmaos]

Kate rocks

[@yeswhynot4659]

I think Kate should be in the 'good' category along with Geany. Kate has (somewhat minimal) git support, syntax highlighting, an inbuilt terminal, code analysis and indexing for some common languages, a vi[m] editing mode, session support, projects, autocompletion, a bunch of plugins, among others. I haven't used Geany much, but from what I've seen, Kate is pretty similar but without quite so many plugins.

[@sp.n7401]

Not to mention LSP support.

[@etaashmathamsetty7399]

Kate is at least in good tier, it's easy to use and notepadqq really can't hold a candle to Kate in my opinion. I wont be able to use notepadqq to write all my c++ code (poor syntax highlighting), but Kate can. Plus the integration in kde plasma is so awesome that i just use it for everything at this point

[@kavinunethsarakoswattage3516]

IDK, it sounded as if you have confused Kate and KWrite. Kate is more like Geany of KDE. It has build tools,syntax highlighting, LSP support, CTag support, External Programme intergration, Intergrated Terminal, Code Snippets etc. Etc. IMO its a bit like VIM, or more appropriately, much like Notepadqq

[@Tara_Li]

You missed some history to nano which explains a fair bit about it's key bindings - nano is a clone/extension of pico, which was the internal editor component of the pine terminal mail client. Of course, micro is the clone/extension of nano - the next of course will likely be milli, then likely centi...

[@cherubin7th]

Haha waiting for Giga

[@RichardBronosky]

@@cherubin7th Eight Gigs And Continuously Swapping

[@shashankmshanbhag7970]

Kate is not just a plain text editor, it can function as an IDE. It is also highly configurable and pretty looking, although somewhat slow responding. I would put it in the OK category or even in GOOD category if they improved the speed and responsiveness of the program.

[@ForeverZer0]

To be fair, the same can be said for a few others on the list though. Add LSP integration into any editor, and transcends into that "quasi-IDE" classification.

[@code8986]

No one puts Kate in the corne… I mean, in the Meh tier - Kate is Great or, at the very least, Good! 😤

[@tristen_grant]

Corne?

[@code8986]

@@tristen_grant It's a reference to an iconic line from Dirty Dancing (a movie from the 80s).

[@Zesuto3]

Nano is always literally the very first thing I install on any Linux distro if it doesn't already include it and I'm not afraid to say it!😤

[@TheBlueThird]

Right on. Use what you want.

[@Tara_Li]

I find the keybinding reminders at the bottom of the screen pretty handy, myself. I really like nano.

[@MixedVictor]

only nano and neovim are the goat ones💪

[@Zesuto3]

Update: Nano is still the very first thing I installed upon migrating to OpenBSD but now I'm forcing myself to use vi and Neovim.

[@stefanfenn7844]

Kate can be configured to store the session like Notepadqq. I use Kate, because Kate supports Vim in some manner.

[@weab]

Kate is actually very good. Personally I'd put it alongside Geany, or maybe even great tier.

[@superslime16th]

Same, i use it with vi mode on

[@helloimatapir]

Gedit at least deserves a spot in the "OK" category. It's intuitive, lightweight, and stable. Out of the box it displays line numbers, has highlighting, including matching brackets, has a spellchecker, displays document statistics, has a file browser, and has support for autosave / creating backups on save. The latter is huge. Notepad on Windows isn't even in the same league as Gedit. I'd also make the same argument for Kate.

[@folksurvival]

and Pluma.

[@padnomnidprenon9672]

Awesome. Switching from Archlinux to Gedit now !

[@xynyde0]

@@padnomnidprenon9672 wut

[@RenderingUser]

@@padnomnidprenon9672 wut

[@hfdcjiirjmcfi]

​@@padnomnidprenon9672 wut

[@joschafinger126]

As has been said elsewhere in this thread, I think you vastly undervalue Kate. Apart from fitting in perfectly with Plasma, Kate also perfectly fits into the Unix philosophy's "do one thing, and do it well" tenet. You open it, you know how to use it. It doesn't get in your way, but it helps you along with line numbering, long-line wrapping by default, syntax highlighting, and so much more. Meanwhile, for all that Emacs is full of features, learning how to get it to do anything but really, really basic stuff requires practically a degree, and I have to say that when I want to open an image, I fail to see why I should do so in a text editor rather than, eg, an image viewer.

[@DMSBrian24]

I think Kate actually has a lot of features and great extendability with plugins etc. I don't use it cause it feels to cluttered for me but I heard very good stuff about it. Also I know 1 guy who uses nano with pretty much vim-like efficiency and it always amazes me xd

[@kendarr]

I use micro, learned vim just to realize I don't need it lol

[@DMSBrian24]

@@kendarr I like both, vim/vi has the advantage of being installed everywhere, the insane community and plugin support and is still more powerful if you're willing to invest a ton of time but for an average or even an advanced (just not hardcore) user, micro offers more than enough. Nano is trash though, I wish I stopped seeing it on tutorials everywhere cause there's really no reason to use it over micro.

[@necrobynerton7384]

I mean, understandable that nano's keybinds are horrendous, but for a simple text editor I've pretty much always used it. Doesn't help that ubuntu and its derivatives always have nano installed, hence why I never bothered to change to another editor. The only reason why I will go check micro right now is to see if it has the more "standard" keybinds (like ctrl+s for saving and ctrl+c/+x for copy/paste). I also have no need for basically anything advanced, if it can read a file I'm a happy guy

[@soulthatcreates]

I feel like you really misrepresented Kate, it is infinitely better than Nano and Gedit... Out of the box, it is arguably more useful than Emacs or Vim.

[@ronobvious1785]

I'll echo what so many others have said. Kate has so much more to offer than what was covered in this video. It definitely ought to be at least 1 tier higher than where it was placed.

[@lukevideckis2260]

I'm so excited for this new series of tier lists!

I see you haven't used Kate at all. Saying that Kate is just "another text editor like Gedit" is just pure ignorance.

[@travis8106]

Kate is just another text editor like Notepad.

[@OctaviusPelagius]

I think you might have confused KWrite for Kate since Kate should be in the same league as Geany. KWrite and Gedit are simple whereas Kate and Geany can be full-fledged IDEs.

[@echolessowl]

dt!!! you don't need to make new layers for text!!! gimp automatically makes dedicated text layers every time you use the text tool in a new place

[@PhilipOlesen]

Yeah, this just adds a named empty layer, and then the text layer that you want is added as normal anyway.

[@scottcegielski8237]

I think gvim should be ranked higher if vim is on the great tier. It's pretty much the same thing and allows you to dedicate a window to a text editing which I find useful. It also makes some things easier like changing the font size and clipboard usage.

[@4cps777]

GVim is actually pretty great for when you're forced to work on Windows. I installed it on my school's computers because we had to work with a proprietary freemium trash IDE.

[@josemembreno4996]

@@4cps777 Yeah man! For Powershell development & what not on windows, I strictly use gvim and I like using it over VSCode 😂 GVIM on windows is actually damn awesome. I have a separate vimrc for GVIM since I disable a lot more stuff like the menu bars and scroll bar. I also added full screen toggle function.

[@plazmaguy13yago9]

I like how the video picture shows diffrent positions to each twct editor to trigger people into clicking

[@NamasteProgramming]

Kate is amazing, it has an option to emulate Vim keys and it supports LSP as well, has integrated terminal and git support.

[@dunkelklinge1]

I like your tier list videos. Keep up your good work! :) But I have to disagree with your opinion on Kate. As a Vim user on server systems I also use Kate on my Plasma desktop - and I really love it. Especially the scrolling overview on the right is great when editing large files.

[@exnihilonihilfit6316]

I think he has it confused with KWrite.

miss vscodium(opensource version of vscode) and helix( young editor writen in rust and plugins will in wasm), for me helix is a "good"(many features work out of the box) and kate is a "good"(has lsp, sql integration, git, vi keybind suport, sessions config and is light and fast and can be simply)

[@sp.n7401]

Was thinking of Helix, but plugin support just doesnt exist yet.

[@Kaspiannn]

@NationalNeedleMouse both are open source tho

[@noferblatz]

The problem with Vim is that Bram Moolenaar puts in the changes he wants, and the source is rarely updated. The Neovim folks recognize that vimscript is a horrible hack, whereas Lua is a brilliant widely supported language. And they can fix bugs and misfeatures that Bram won't fix.

[@alureon1]

bingo

[@infinitelink]

Bram Moolenaar INVENTED VIM, and makes conservative choices to (among other things) support many platforms (going by things he does and doesn't accept), which gives you a degree of complexity and horrifying organization of the code and a lot of pause before you change or add things... similar to what is seen in GNU utils. And that doesn't allow for things like bundling python dependencies or other languages to extend the editor by default since these things may not run on other and older platforms, and increase the security attack vulnerability surface of your system exponentially! Folks ought not attack the guy not only doing the work, but who is the author of the tool (and copyright holder!) in the first place. And given he generously kept the licensing as FOSS for others to use, fork, etc, as they saw fit, if there's a fork over disagreements and you prefer that, cool. But please don't complain about the guy who gave you one of the most awesome pieces of editing software to exist built on his own time and dime FOR FREE. Please. It's one reason why people refer to the FOSS "community" as being so terribly sick. It IS sick. Many of the most critical things aren't really "community" nonsense anything--they're projects of passion or love that someone else, or a tiny club of others, who owes or owe you less than nothing, did and shared "AS IS." And maintain--often at great personal expense (not just money, but life, health, etc., I've literally been the guy who is asked to check-in, to make sure one or another is still alive, has food, etc, regularly, because all the infrastructure they're running and code they maintain is CRUSHING them--and people are often just attacking them for little failures here or there). When it's there's and they "refuse to lalala" the reasonable response is "cool. Thank you for all you do. Where can I donate, btw?" Or, "you're sleeping and have a steady supply of sandwiches, caffeine, and water, right?"

[@NateROCKS112]

@@infinitelink I get where you're coming from, and I agree that developers' health matters. Releasing software gratis is indeed generous, and it's always hard to resist the tempation to make software proprietary, so releasing free software is virtuous and commendable. However, the position of the free software movement is simply that proprietary software is morally unjust and that people have a right to use and modify their computers as they wish. Regarding passion projects, it is true that a lot of free software is developed by just a few people, but that doesn't change the morality of releasing software as free software, though you obviously get what you pay for. Also, you say the software is the developer's, but the entire philosophical position behind free software is that someone else's copy is not the developer's software anymore. It's theirs. I wanted to briefly touch on something as well. You put a lot of weight on the initial author (which is close to the term "creator"), but authors are not gods, and subsequent authors also generally deserve credit. The guy doing the most work currently is probably the one towards whom the most funding and resources should be directed at present. Also, being the copyright holder is an artificial government construct and doesn't mean anything morally. It matters for free software practically only insomuch as it relates to the enforcement of free licenses, but the copyright holder is often not the author -- even sometimes in a free software context. But really, all of these are side points. OP wasn't demanding anything from the developer, though maybe he could've expressed more sympathy. OP didn't express that the developer owed him anything; merely that he'd prefer to use a better alternative because of lack of maintenance on the part of the developer. His comments weren't really out of place.

[@MasterHigure]

@@infinitelink I don't think we are belittling Molenaar and his contributions. But you also can't deny that Neovim is moving faster and doing cooler stuff. Maybe precisely because they are building on Molenaar's framework and are also more than one person. Vim is a marvelous achievement. No one is claiming anything else (just the helpfiles have more words than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy). They just personally prefer to sail on the superior speed of innovation from Neovim.

[@infinitelink]

@@NateROCKS112 Software that's not released because others would then benefit while you don't isn't "no longer the author's." Copyright isn't immoral, but deeply moral: the while copyleft movement literally rests on it--violates the rights of the authors and they can legally attack you. And gods or not, you don't jump into another's sandbox and start s[oil]ing in it, then telling "what!? They aren't GODS!!!!" And OP took issue with Bram not accepting every little patch "so nvim is...!" That's not a very explicit, but is a connotative, attack. So not cool.

[@d3stinYwOw]

About IntelliJ - community versions are open source ones in fact, using Apache 2.0 ;) About Kate - it's much more than plain limited editor - it can do a lot of stuff, plus have Vim plugin :)

[@RedBearAK]

The thumbnail trolling with these “ranking” videos. **chef’s kiss**

[@jofflgt4359]

Got baited here when I saw Neovim in the Yuck tier in the thumbnail. That’s evil

[@briancarey9924]

People might be interested to know that there is an important link between ed and vim with each step an improvement. ed->em->ex->vi->vim.

[@afanhaqulfadillah6992]

VS Codium should be there (in great tier). Kate should be in Good IMO, it has lots of useful plugin

[@Winnetou17]

In regards to "Ed". Is there any other editor in this 14 text editors list that can open/operate a file of any size ? I ask because at one time I had a log file which was like dozens of GB big. From what I remember I couldn't open it neither in vim neither in nano, because they tried to load the whole file in RAM, so unless you have excessive RAM sizes, it will crash. I don't remember exactly what I did, I think I searched how I can split it and chunked it.

[@eugeniovincenzo1621]

Not on the list but ultraedit can...

[@Winnetou17]

@@eugeniovincenzo1621 That's good to know, thanks!

[@eugeniovincenzo1621]

Ultraedit loads the file piecemeal...the entire file is not loaded...what is loaded is what fits in memory then as you go forward in the file it loads more and drops the beginning...this is what we used at Pricewaterhoues Coopers Data Analytics....

[@viktordemenev9616]

At multiple GB size I'd use specialized tools. less/bat to take a look, grep/ripgrep to search and filter, sed/sd to do search and replace, awk for complex transformations, and a few other ones for structured data (csv or json).

[@DigitalMoonlight]

Also not on the lost but joe and mcedit can as well. Look up the joe editor benchmark to see a good comparison between text editors.

[@benzeglam]

I add my vote to the people who say Kate is underrated here

[@henriquegasques]

Would be interesting to see your review of Helix, the new, rust-written editor based on vim and kakoune

[@AdiosOcelote]

I use Kate and I'm offended! I actually only use Kate because it has nice themes and is somewhat similar to Notepad++, while also being rather fast. Thinking about trying out Vim/Neovim, but not keen to learn a new text editor, so sticking with Kate. Other text editors don't really seem worthwhile to me due to various reasons. Really wish they made Notepad++ free and open source so we can also use it on Linux (no, I'm not gonna Wine it), as I used it for like a decade or something similar (on Windows) and I could not even find an IDE that was even remotely close to being as good and cool as Notepad++.

[@reoencarcelado5904]

@Adios-ocelote: I heard that "NotepadQQ" is a open-source version[/equivalent] of Notepad++.

[@Little-bird-told-me]

Thumbs up if you came here upin arms after seeing the thumbnail

[@botnet3201]

pretty much agree with everything except I'd place kakoune higher and kate is actually a very featureful editor. Also I still see some charm in vi and force myself to use it sometimes. It forces you to use marks and ex commands you probably wouldn't bother on vim because of plugins or new features like selection mode. I don't really use many plugins on vim but when I use vi I really do miss some vim features like syntax highlighting and the "i" modifier for commands like ciw, di"...

[@adrianinsaval]

I feel like you are greatly underestimating kate, it is orders of magnitudes more powerful and useful than gedit, it is closer to geany although problably kdevelop is the actual equivalent for that. And kdevelop is just kate with some extra functionality for compiling stuff.

[@exnihilonihilfit6316]

I think he has it confused with KWrite.

[@adrianinsaval]

@@exnihilonihilfit6316 that or he never bothered trying out the cool features kate has, or he tried it out looong time ago when it wasn't as good. Kwrite is relatively obscure, most distros that I've seen ship with kate but not kwrite.

[@bahathir_]

Actually, beside GNU EMacs and it's clones, I also love GNU ed. FOr people who want to learn regex, this editor will force you to learn regex. :) ALso, ed also makes using sed much easier. It was difficult at the first time, but now feel comfortable editing my scripts using ed. Thank you.

[@yash1152]

interesting - the gnu ed, sed, regex wow

[@sonofabippi]

VI is great because I think it even comes on toasters if they have linux running on them.

[@roberttranceedm]

KATE can be a text editor and a robust IDE. You really never have been deep into Kate, that shows.

[@HaveANceDay]

One editor worth looking is mcedit. This editor is a terminal-based with some nice features that were easy to learn. Since I struggled with vi this was a nice editor in general for me. Also, top file managers

[@kylewillett9817]

Great video DT. Personally, I would put Kate in the great category along with Vim and NeoVim. I like how Kate can be a fully functional IDE. I can run g++ or make or clang from the built in terminal for my project and then edit the source above. Kate got me through grad school in IT. It think the Vim forks are great and more powerful I just don't know how to do all the super powerful stuff in them. Have never used Emacs but have wanted to try out Doom Emacs from your videos just never got around to it yet.

[@samgould8567]

Ed is yuck-tier for interactive use, but great-tier for scripting. It's the best editor for automated line-based text editing, way better than in-place sed. Once you know ed really well, Ansible's lineinfile will make you cry out in despair.

[@amoledzeppelin]

alias ee='rlwrap ed -p:' alias eer='doas rlwrap ed -p:' How about now (for interactive use)?

[@jonspoonamore3721]

Thanks for this video DT. You introduced me to Micro a year or 2 back. I started using it and have not looked back.

[@ohdude6643]

I saw that thumbnail and felt an heart attack coming.

[@Hyperboid]

Disagree with kate in meh, here's an analogy: Gedit : Geany :: Kwrite : Kate As in, Kate is the KDE equivalent of Geany, and Kwrite is the KDE equivalent of Gedit

[@IronFractal]

My top 2: 1. VSCodium 2. Micro

[@QmVuamFtaW4]

the thumbnail is triggering, VERY TRIGGERING!!!

[@DenzNoble]

Got baited by the thumbnail 💀💀💀, kate 4 life tho 👽

[@s0nspark-public]

As a loooong time vim user, I made the switch to neovim this year and it has been a productivity game changer. Excellent plugins like nvim-lspconfig, telescope.nvim, nvim-dap and nvim-treesitter have given me an true IDE-like environment that works equally well on the desktop and over SSH with the customizability I have grown to love. I no longer need to switch to VSCode for some tasks - amazing! It can take some time to get set up but it is well worth it ... and many pre-made configs (LunarVim, nvim-config, etc) are avaialble to get you off the ground quickly if you need it. And, yes, that thumbnail was a total troll LOL

[@NonameEthereal]

You are such an epic troll @DT. :P When I saw the thumbnail I was ready to go rabid at Neovim being in Yuck. :D

[@xx_swaggerm8_xx197]

I came here to listen the explanation of why neovim was at the yuck category at the banner, great strategy btw

[@djacobs1374]

Ed is actually my favorite text editor personally. Recently I was encountering visual bugs in EMACS when using it over SSH, and when I switched to Ed I stopped having these issues. Sure, it lacks a lot of modern text editor features, but one thing I can say is that Ed has never let me down. I still use it for personal coding on a daily basis. (It's also fun to see people's reactions when they see you using Ed and have no idea what's going on :D )

[@kendarr]

Why not use vim at that point?

[@djacobs1374]

@@kendarr I've actually been avoiding using vim. I don't doubt it's a great editor, but seeing that it is so ubiquitous makes me want to try other options. For me, programming is a passion, and I want to explore it (languages, editors, paradigms, etc.) rather than merely choosing the widely-accepted best option. If I'm just using the "best" options, practices, languages, editors, etc I'm not channeling the deep passion that I have for programming. Without exploration programming becomes uninteresting. I don't use vim because I use ed, which I've discovered through years of passionately searching through numerous choices of text editors. Hopefully that wasn't too long of a response, but hopefully that explains why I use ed rather than vim. :)

[@kendarr]

@@djacobs1374 Sure fair enough, i'm not familiar with ed, but by the video it seems very wierd from what i'm used to, I use micro, vim is just too feature rich, it has so much stuff I'll never use for a config lol

[@djacobs1374]

@@kendarr Yes, ed is without a doubt quite weird compared to other editors. :D I also used micro for a time before I started learning ed. Micro is quite good, I have to say.

[@djacobs1374]

@@vlc-cosplayer I can see how you would think that. :) However, I do not think ed is painful to use at all. In fact, the regular expressions in ed are extremely powerful (there is a reason that vi would later copy them for some of its regex tools.) I'll give you that ed is quite hostile to new users, but a tool doesn't need to be newbie-friendly to be effective.

[@robertcoyle9071]

Micro is all I use for small stuff. CTRL+s save, CTRL+q quit. It copies and pastes. That and terminator for terminal are the first things I grab

[@mnemonic_de]

Nicely played. Baited me with the thumbnail sorting.

[@gregorybrannan7202]

“I really trolled you guys with that thumbnail.” Yeah, ya did! I refused to watch because of the thumbnail!! I’m glad you posted the real list :p

[@cybernit3]

Thank you telling me about Micro I like it more than vi or nano; I am use to the keybinds. Your tier list is pretty good. I find EMACS and VIM hard to get use to. So I usually use Geany and Micro is good for simple text editing. Notepad++ was kind of good on windows, I didn't play with Notepadqq, I think Geany runs better. If anyone remember the Amiga computer well there was this text editor I loved was called CygnusED was really nice to use... wow 1990 learning C and using CygnusED and SAS/C... thanks DT

[@khalilovitch_]

You got me with the thumbnail 😂😂 nice one

[@kellyrunnels5684]

started using default emacs bindings, i'm actually liking it more than Evil mode

[@exnihilonihilfit6316]

Be sure to study the topic of Emacs keyboard ergonomics thoroughly, or you're gonna cry in a painful, helpless, and hopeless frustration in a decade, if you actually end up using it a lot.

[@mgdotdev]

Daily Neovim user - best benefit that vanilla Neovim provides is the async event loop. If you're running a long-executed command (say, grep over an entire project filesystem), the execution of that cmd isn't going to block drawing in the main editor. This is in contrast to vim where if you hit it long enough the editor will flicker as it switches between drawing the screen, running your grep, and switching back to your code.

[@LudoTechWorld]

I love the clickbait thumbnail with Vim/Neovim in the "Yuck" category :D

[@itildude]

Your "clickbait" fu on your thumbnails for the list videos is masterful good sir. :-) I knew there was no way Emacs was going lower than great for you!

[@amoledzeppelin]

Well, jokes aside, ed is unironically god-tier. That is, if you know the level of integration it can achieve, especially in combination with rlwrap that enables command/input history and allows you to add your own keybindings via .inputrc if you don't get used to the libreadline's native Emacs-like keybindings, and even in combination with line-oriented syntax highlighters (like pygmentize -s) if you really need that feature. And yes, you can write a novel in ed + groff, and the real irony of the situation is both of these tools combined can be *properly* learned faster than e.g. Emacs. The hardest part actually is converting the TTF fonts you need in your novel/paper to the format groff can understand, but, luckily, that is a one-time job. P.S. Out of your list, I used Geany, Atom, Kate/KWrite and NeoVIm some time ago but they proved to be overkill for my needs. So, depending on the system, my main editors as of now are Vim (with a very minimal .vimrc and no plugins), ed (with rlwrap and -p), busybox vi and my own editor called nne, although I really need to reconsider whether or not to continue its development.

[@PinakiGupta82Appu]

- It depends on use case scenarios. I can tell you about my requirements so it is more of a specific use case. For some reason, I need the proper Microsoft VSCode with the Neovim VSC plugin, along with Neovim installed on the system if I ever have to work with VSCode. GVim is my go-to text editor almost for every type of workflow. I've never had a good time with any terminal only text editor including Vim. I don't expect a GUI for the rest of the toolchain either. The terminal is the thing that exists for the crucial tasks. I need a pointing device for text editing so that I can focus on the job at hand. For the rest of the workflow, I use the Windows Command Line or the Linux Terminal. - NotepadQQ cannot replace Notepad++, I assure you. - Kate is an advanced text editor, not a replacement for bundled ones. KWrite is possibly the bundled editor program in KDE which is much simpler. - VSCode or GVim whatever I use, in both cases I need Platform IO Base Installation, Arduino CLI, LLVM-Clang, GCC, GIT, GDB, Python plus Node.js as dependencies, CMake and some SDK. Also, remember that not every PC user wants to stick with a single OS as their daily driver. They have different setups for different types of computing needs. Virtual Machines are favoured when accessing separate bare-metal hardware for a different OS is not feasible. - Emacs has a GUI which is fine I guess, but I don't have much to say about it. I don't have time for another text editor. Neovim is not 100% compatible with Vim and it also lacks a proper GUI version. Other than that, Neovim is fine. - What I need then! At the end of the day, I need Clang's Asynchronous Language Server Protocol behind the autocompletion, Vim's keybindings, some custom keyboard shortcuts, custom key sequences, macros, TabNine, and a few utility plugins specific to the requirements for the type of tasks I perform. VSCode with Neovim does mimic regular GVim almost 80%. Although, most Vim plugins including the native Neovim plugins written in Lua won't work in this setup when Neovim runs inside VSCode. The regular GVim bridges the gap in my use case scenario. I place GVim and VSCode at the top of the list.

[@tomaso0]

You should try out Helix, it's very much like Kakoune but with lsp integration out of the box and some great new ideas

[@marioschroers7318]

Atom: »It is an Electron app.« Now that goes completely against your latest take on »great« Electron apps. I agree though, Atom is horrible. Liked it in the beginning, but at some point, it had a memory leak or something, I could watch it slowly eating all RAM (16 GB) of my system in htop. »You're not going to write your doctoral dissertation in Ed.« LMAO. I love your sense of humor, DT! Keep up these lists! (BTW, I anticipated Emacs was going to the Great tier 😁)

[@alt2458]

He thinks it's slow for been an Electro app, which is not the case at all.

[@phonewithoutquestion80]

Nano is alright, I have a soft spot for it since it's the first text editor I used on Linux. I would say Nano is fine for messing with dotfiles, where I won't expect to change modes from the get-go. I still default to Vim. Speaking of which, Vi is so jarring to get into after having finally made my vimrc usable I just can't touch it. There are these very specific differences between Vi and Vi Improved (Vim) that it feels worlds apart to me. Nice is another editor that has perks that appeal to both GUI and Terminal users, and it really lives up to its name, it's also feature-complete so it won't get any nasty business from upstream.

[@murilorodelli]

Missing vscode in this comparison nowadays is incomplete. Vscode is big enough these days to not be ignored

[@gtx01account37]

vscodium >

[@Master-yn6ie]

vscode is electron, it would probably go to yuck tier here, lol.

[@TheExileFox]

Vscodium goes into a new category "useless". because it doesn't offer a simple way to connect with for example gcc, yet it is supposed to be an IDE

[@murilorodelli]

Of course vscode connects with gcc or whatever. In fact, new ide capabilities of vim, neovim and emacs is based on the language Server protocol, a vscode technology. You must be living under a rock. Vscode is much more versatile than every other ide on this list o the get go. And this is awesome because the companies are really migrating dev environment to linux only because vscode allows them to get developers to be as productive as they are on windows with necessary tooling. Hate vscode only because it is an electron app is silly and counterproductive. With developers and data scientists coming to linux thanks to vs code is a huge win. With time they get familiarized with emacs, neovim, etc

[@josemembreno4996]

Damn.. I actually use GVIM and I’m offended.. all my friends tell me it’s the worst flavor of vim and it’s difficult to deal with, but I’ve managed to tame it for my windows development 😅. And tbh, it works fantastic for me! I use regular Vim & GVIM mostly for my windows development at work!

[@Anonymous4045]

Waiting for a distro tier list lol

[@m4rt_]

its subjective. and any distro can be converted into a diferent one. for example using bedrocklinux you can mix and match distros.

[@Anonymous4045]

@@m4rt_ I know it changes per person, Id still like to hear dt's opinions on the most popular ones in one vid tho

[@abhabh6896]

@@m4rt_ No it cant, thats a myth. Even dofferent buntus arent same (yeah, certainapps wirk in ubuntu but wont install in lubuntu)

[@lukeomatik]

Damm, you played me very well with the thumbnail. gg

[@patrickprucha5522]

Nano, keybindings can be completely change to what ever you want. Kate, on the other hand is a very good text editor. It is compared with vscode. What i like about kate and micro is that while i am scripting it closes the bracket, apostrophies, etc out of the box. With vim or emacs, we need to add a plugin!!

[@KoltPenny]

Edmacs: Emacs with Ed bindings.

[@alexkorshunov4876]

Micro is the best!

[@vadble]

Hi DT ... thanks for your great work! I would propose to add 3 columns: Linux Pro User, Linux entry user - Junior, Linux entry user - ex win senior;) ... and not necessary to fill every cell ... this is only raw idea ... focusing to enable easy guidance also for new Linux users (kids or win experienced users)

[@guilherme5094]

Kate is great, and a great IDE too.

[@kayoma4966]

I really felt that when he said "to break down into tears" at the beginning

[@SlowMenThinking]

Yea I use kate for web development use notepad++ in windows environments, and in consul will use anything installed. Kid you not have seen people edit and make text files in M$ Word. in the music world chord-pro files has been a thing, luring the code format and having a txt editor makes things simple and fast just type the code and save with the extension, bet everybody here just gets it, Regular people just don't get it and ask for an app ):

[@DarkosLab]

Fun story we had an old AIX server at work that only had ed and vi on it as editors. Naturally I chose to use vi when I needed to edit config files, but i did mess about in ed for a bit and oh boy is it not user friendly.

[@amoledzeppelin]

Of course that AIX wasn't supposed to have libreadline/rlwrap, I guess, but what else isn't user-friendly in ed, besides H and P not being turned on by default? In fact, if you know vi, you can get pretty familiar with ed pretty fast. Just have to remember that all numeric ranges mean lines and not characters. "User-friendly" and "noob-friendly" are different things.

[@zinc6625]

cringe thumbnail, based list.

[@drsensor]

You forgot Helix editor

[@yash1152]

0:41 wow, so, u'll be showing how you make this list as well, nice. awesome

[@soberhippie]

I'd go for colours the other way round: red for yuck as in "stop, don't use it", green/blue for great

[@TheLinuxCast]

Damn, pulled in again by the thumbnail.

[@MonkeyMagick]

Emacs comes with a text editor now?

[@kimberlynnkelly539]

Would you believe that I use GVIM? It was what I hoped it would be. VIM, in the GUI. Certainly it could look better, but that is not what it is for.

[@Portneau-z6v]

This video gave me the push I needed to never click on one of your videos again. Thank you.

[@exnihilonihilfit6316]

What triggered you? (Genuinely asking)