this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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While I understand the lack of proper open source alternatives for some software like AutoCAD and After Effects, it always felt weird that the best IDEs/Text Editors are made by big corporations, because you know, these are the tools programmers use.

I tried vim/neovim, which I enjoy using, but I've come to prefer visual editors instead of text based. Kate looks promising, and I'm willing to contribute to it in my free time, but it just has that "amateurish" feel to it that I can't explain.

Anyone aware of other alternatives?

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[–] pol@infosec.pub 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] simonweiss@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This + package to enable VSCode marketplace. The only VSCode features it lacks afaik are out of the box settings sync and remote container development, which colud be substituted with plugins.

EDIT: also be sure to check out Lapce suggested by Yote.zip - it's a banger.

[–] pol@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

You don't need that when you use NixOS 😋

[–] sprl@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Any idea how well vscodium runs on macos? Is the performance worde than normal vscode?

[–] BurnedOliveTree@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

It’s the same code as VScode, just without telemetry, so probably the same or marginally better

[–] kool_newt@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For anyone that used Atom, check out

https://pulsar-edit.dev/

Fuck microsoft

[–] Daeraxa@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As one of the Pulsar team, thanks for the support! Always nice to see it being recommended on these kinds of threads.

[–] dot20@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would suggest adding some screenshots to your website

[–] Daeraxa@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

We are going through a bit of a rework for the website and docs site as a whole but yeah, I agree that we should have some.

[–] nope@yiffit.net 2 points 1 year ago

You could try VSCodium. VS code but less spyware-y

[–] Lauchmelder@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't exchange my neovim config for anything. After getting used to how vim works and installing all the plugins I need, I feel like this is my favourite editor. It looks nice and I enjoy using keyboard shortcuts over using a mouse.

That said, the day I lose my neovim config is the day I die. If it disappears I'm doomed

[–] Daeraxa@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've been keeping a list of alternatives for a while now that I really like:

  • Pulsar - An actively developed fork of Atom once Microsoft killed it off. Disclosure: I'm on the Pulsar team so I'm more than a little biased here but if you want to get involved we are always after people who want to contribute and we have a very friendly and active Discord server. First thing we did was re-implement the package backend and migrate it so we were able to keep the thousands and thousands of community packages for download.
  • Lite-XL - A really lightweight and fast editor written in C and Lua that is very actively developed. I use this on some less powerful systems.
  • Lapce - Another lightweight and very fast editor written in Rust and is in the middle of moving to their own UI framework. Not that extensible at the moment but supports LSP plugins.

Then for terminal based editors I really like Helix which is vim-like but uses a selection -> action model (like Kakoune). I really like it because it requires almost no configuration.

[–] monobot@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

People are writing different opinions, but you are right, best IDEs are comercial software.

I think it is just because it takes a lot of time and effort on boring stuff to make this tools smooth. Generally in open source we work on fun parts and leave those boring last 20% unfinished, which is ok with me.l

[–] gian@lemmy.grys.it 1 points 9 months ago

If you need something specific for Python, there is Eric

[–] perivesta@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

If you like Kate you can try Kdevelop. It's the same editor base but a bit more IDE like

[–] erAck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Rodeo@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

I love geany but it's basically done. The little development that happens is maintenance only. It's great at what it does now, but don't expect any new feature (rip LSP)

[–] yote_zip@pawb.social 1 points 1 year ago

Lapce is an alternative that you can try, though it's self-described as "pre-alpha".

[–] TrivialBetaState@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

My first comment would be that free software made by a corporation is still free software. Like Eclipse, which was originally made by IBM and is a huge ecosystem, especially for "java and friends." So, there is nothing wrong with VS Code(ium). It is a "proper" open source editor and a very good one (I don't use it though - I prefer EMACS).

As for community-base alternatives (which is probably what you mean), you could consider kdevelop or pulsar. There are other alternatives which are equally good and surely one of them will fit your purpose. You mentioned Kate and I can't find anything wrong with it, especially once you start installing the plugins that are relevant to what you do. Same with Gedit.

[–] g7s@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] pkulak@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Astrovim too.

[–] Marxine@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How does it compare to similar stuff like AstroNvim, SpaceVim, NVChad, etc? I'm trying to choose one but having difficulties 😥

[–] g7s@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's got a pretty good community, you always find some help online. It comes per default only with "needed" plugins, which makes it a pretty nice IDE already. If you ever need more plugins, it's also not complicated to install them,

[–] Marxine@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Good community is always a plus for any project. Thanks for the recommendation!

[–] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Neovim + LunarVim is most of what I need for software engineering out of the box. It even has debugger support. Plus it's way faster than VSCode and terminal friendly.

[–] sag@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Yea, I also use neovim with NvChad config. Even use NVim in my termux.

[–] nrbray@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I am on the path VSCodium --> Lapce under NixOS for visual editors and to decorporate my workflow. i.e. away from VSCode which is [otherwise] exceptional.

However, Helix looks incredible.

[–] abuttifulpigeon@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

VSCodium. Basically ungoogled-chromium but VS Code and Microsoft.

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What about JetBrains Fleet? I'm not sure it's open source, but it's free and I think it's a direct competitor to VS Code.

[–] 133arc585@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Quoting JetBrains,

Fleet is free to use during the public preview

(emphasis mine)

So it is only temporarily free. Once it's polished it will no longer be free. Better to not get tied in to something that will be taken away from you before long.

[–] corytheboyd@kbin.social -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can also just… pay for it? I give money to JetBrains in exchange for incredibly useful tools. It’s okay to pay for things.

[–] 133arc585@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago

What a weird take. You're allowed to pay for whatever you'd like. Personally, I can't afford to pay for any JetBrains product, even if I wanted to.

Not only are there alternatives which may be better overall or better suited to someone's needs, that wasn't even my point. My point was more that it is only temporarily free, and so the parent commenter's comment of "it's free" should be taken with a grain of salt if you're considering the product.

Moreover, we're in the Open Source community: Fleet is neither free nor open source, and pointing that out here is relevant.

[–] Marxine@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I alternate between VCCodium and Kate, both are fine to me, but Kate feels snappier since I'm on KDE. It's also less of a resource drain.

[–] MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I can't manage to make Kate look half descent on Mint (Cinnamon). It does look great on Plasma