Best Code Editors for Linux and Windows
Best Code Editors
There are a lot of code editors for Linux and Windows, in this article you will find the best code editors available right now.
1. Vim (Free – GNU Compatible)
vim is one of the most popular code editors of UNIX. Vim is a clone of vi, but it has better features. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to make creating and changing any kind of text very efficient. Among its features are:
- persistent, multi-level undo tree
- extensive plugin system
- support for hundreds of programming languages and file formats
- powerful search and replace
- integrates with many tools
If you want to install on your computer you can download it (Windows) or search it for your Linux distro.
Download Vim
MacVim: https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim
2. Bluefish (Free – GPL)
Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and web developers, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages.
Bluefish Features
- Lightweight – Bluefish tries to be lean and clean, as far as possible given it is a GUI editor.
- Fast – Bluefish starts really quick (even on a netbook) and loads hundreds of files within seconds.
- Multiple document interface easily opens 500+ documents (tested more than 10000 documents simultaneously).
- Multi-threaded support for remote files using gvfs, supporting FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV, CIFS and more.
- Integrate external programs such as make, lint, weblint, xmllint, tidy, javac, or your own program or script to handle advanced text processing or error detection.
- Unlimited undo/redo functionality.
- Auto-recovery of changes in modified documents after a crash, kill or shutdown
Bluefish is a multi-platform application that runs on most desktop operating systems including Linux, FreeBSD, macOS-X, Windows, OpenBSD, and Solaris. If you want to install bluefish on your system or see the complete list of features, you can find more information at the official website.
Download Bluefish
3. Sublime Text
It’s one of the most popular best code editors for web development and really is sublime. Sublime Text is a great code editor because is lightweight, fast and it has support for a lot of plugins, for example, emmet.
Sublime Features:
- Multiple Selections
- Multiple selections allow you to interactively change many lines at once, rename variables with ease and manipulate files fast.
- Command Palette
- The Command Palette holds infrequently used functionality, like sorting, changing the syntax and changing the indentation settings.
- Split Editing
- Edit files side by side, or edit two locations in the one file. You can edit with as many rows and columns as you wish.
- Customize anything
- Key Bindings, Menus, Snippets, Macros, Completions and more – just about everything in Sublime Text is customizable with simple JSON files.
- Distraction Free Mode
- Distraction Free Mode is full screen, chrome-free editing, with nothing but your text in the center of the screen.
Download Sublime
You can download Sublime Text from the official website.
If you don’t like that Sublime Text isn’t open-source, you can check the Lime Text project: http://limetext.org/
4. Atom (Free – MIT)
Atom is a text editor that’s modern, approachable, yet hackable to the core—a tool you can customize to do anything but also use productively without ever touching a config file.
Atom Features:
- Cross-platform editing
- Built-in package manager
- Smart autocompletion
- File system browser
- Multiple panes
- Find and replace
In my opinion, Atom is a great alternative to Sublime Text, because it has a lot of functionalities and extensive support of plugins.
Download Atom
Build from source: https://github.com/atom/atom/blob/master/docs/build-instructions/linux.md
5. Brackets
If you’re a web developer, Brackets could be your favorite IDE, It’s an incredible web development IDE and should be a complete alternative to SublimeText. It is written in Javascript by Adobe.
Brackets Features
- Inline Editors
- Live Preview
- It works with Google Chrome
- Preprocessor Support
- SCSS
- LESS
- Extensions support
- Emmet
- Beautify
- Indent Guides
- Git integration
- W3C Validation
- Cross-platform
Download Brackets
Built from source: https://github.com/adobe/brackets/releases
Brackets Videos on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CodeBrackets
6. Komodo Edit (Free – Open Source)
Komodo Edit is a simple, polyglot editor that provides the basic functionality you need for programming. You can use Komodo Edit to make a great website using HTML5 and CSS. Personally, I have used Komodo to create HTML5 and CSS files, but you can use it to make better things. Even you can install extensions to increment the number of functionalities of Komodo Edit.
Download Komodo Edit for your system
Also, you can buy or try Komodo IDE to enjoy more functionalities:
https://www.activestate.com/komodo-ide
7. Code Lite
CodeLite is an open-source, free, cross-platform IDE specialized in C, C++, PHP, and JavaScript (mainly for backend developers using Node.js) programming languages which run best on all major Platforms ( OSX, Windows, and Linux )
CodeLite Features
- Code Completion
- Support for C compilers
- LLDB support
- GDB support
- Xdebug support
- Refactoring
- Built-in SFTP
- Source Control Plugins
- Code Navigation
Download CodeLite for your system
8. NetBeans
NetBeans is more than a code editor, it’s a complete and powerful IDE for software development. Personally, I have used it to create Java applications but NetBeans has support for many languages. NetBeans IDE lets you quickly and easily develop Java desktop, mobile, and web applications, as well as HTML5 applications with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. The IDE also provides a great set of tools for PHP and C/C++ developers. It is free and open-source and has a large community of users and developers around the world.
Download NetBeans for your system
8. Visual Studio Code
VS Code is a great code editor for Linux, Windows, and Mac. VS Code is developed by Microsoft, it has good support for a lot of plugins and incredible features.
Visual Studio Features
- IntelliSense
- Go beyond syntax highlighting and auto-complete with IntelliSense, which provides smart completions based on variable types, function definitions, and imported modules.
- Git support
- Review diffs, stage files, and make commits right from the editor. Push and pull from any hosted Git service.
- Debugging
- Support for many languages
- Go
- LUA
- C
10. Emacs
This is my favorite code editor because the number of functions in emacs is incredible. Many people think that Emacs is very hard to use but I think that everyone should give an opportunity to it. Emacs is available for any operating system: Linux, BSD, Windows, Mac, and Solaris.
Emacs Features
- Content-aware editing modes, including syntax colouring, for many file types.
- Complete built-in documentation, including a tutorial for new users.
- Full Unicode support.
- Highly customizable, using Emacs Lisp code or a graphical interface.
- An entire ecosystem of functionality beyond text editing, including a project planner, mail and news reader, debugger interface, calendar, and more.
- A packaging system for downloading and installing extensions.
Download Emacs for your system
You can use any of these code editors, I suggest that you try each one and then chose your favorite.
If you are looking for how to install PHP and XAMP in Windows, Check out our article on How To Install PHP Or XAMP In Windows 10/8.1/8.
