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Depends what you need. Kate, Vi/Vim/emacs all do different things - such as text highlighting or they're able to be set up for PHP or HTML. If you are happy with gedit stick with it, as long as does what you need and you're comfortable with it it's the "best" - for you.
All we can do is give opinions based on what we use and what we use it for.
Yea it all depends on what you're doing. I personally use vim for almost everything. It has a learning curve, but if you use the terminal a lot you'll appreciate it. vim + screen is my combo for writing code.
You want to learn the very basics of vim. If you boot into rescue mode, gedit might not be available. Also, you want to use visudo to modify /etc/sodoers. To edit /etc/passwd you need to use "vipw" to add similar error checking.
You probably heard of the emacs guy bragging to a vim user about all the features that emacs had, like lisp, email, games, browsing, etc. The vim fan surprised him by agreeing the emacs was a great OS, but then added "the only thing it is missing is a good editor".
By now you've probably gotten the gist of what we're saying -- we don't know if there is anything better out there for you -- but there sure is a lot out there in addition to gedit, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_text_editors for a comparison of a lot of different editors.
If you are serious about looking at other editors, make a list of the features you think are important to you. Then go through the Wikipedia list and try some of the editors that fit. Most Linux distributions offer many of the editors. I recall one person who thought rectangular selection was critical -- he found a few that had that feature.
I read a recent article that claimed that carpel tunnel syndrome has decreased markedly in the last 5 years, so don't worry about a common claim that emacs causes one to use the keyboard too much (common -> one instance in my experience) ... cheers, makyo
Last edited by makyo; 03-10-2008 at 08:38 AM.
Reason: Edit 1: typo
All text editors have some features that set them apart. But, from what I see certain editors are more useful in certain situations. Like already stated when using visudo you are required to use vi, therefore you should know how to use it.
Otherwise for development purposes, vi is good but I find it harder to use on larger scale projects. I recently started using Kate and I find it to be one of the simplest and most powerful editors.
And when it comes down to it, in the end its always your preference and thats the beauty of GNU/Linux, choice.
Personally I like kate and I use it whenever I can.
Unfortunately, I do a lot of work via ssh on remote machines, and for that it is vi all the way.
Now, I've been programming computers since before there were interactive terminals to do that with, and unlike many of the other old-time programmers here, I don't like vi. I didn't like the old line editor I had to use when I programmed PDP-11 computers under RT-11, I didn't like the editor I had to use with CP/M, and I don't like vi.
All that said, I can use it easily enough because when you have only a basic terminal session going that is pretty much the only editor you can use. Also, of course, it is the only editor you can be sure will be available on any *nix box you connect with.
So learning vi is a good plan, anyway. But using a graphical editor, which is smart enough to change colors depending on what the statement is, and to keep track of open/close braces, and keep track of quotation marks, makes life - particularly debugging - a whole lot simpler.
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