Software Development on Linux → Editing Text using Text Editors → Recommended Editors for Beginners

2.2. Recommended Editors for Beginners

The following text editors are recommended for developers who are new to Linux development:

Kate

Kate (short for "KDE Advanced Text Editor") is a powerful programmer's editor for the KDE environment.
It has menus, toolbars, a nice user-interface, syntax highlighting and operates in a Windows-like manner.
If you have KDE installed, you could give it a try.

gedit

gedit is the default GNOME editor, which is also suitable to development.
Has syntax highlighting, menus and toolbars, syntax highlighting and most other things developers need.
GNOME is known to deviate from the MS-Windows conventions in some respects, which may prove to be an obstacle to people who convert to it (or to gedit specifically) from Windows.

NEdit

NEdit is a Powerful, desktop-neutral, programmer's editor.
Emulates the Windows conventions precisely.
Has a nice GUI, syntax highlighting, and many powerful features.
Probably not installed by default and so will require an explicit installation using your distribution's package manager.

Written by Shlomi Fish