Hey all!

I'm now starting to learn to program in C. I installed Slackware - KDE and I wanted to know witch text editor should I use to be able to have code highlighting and tabs for diferent files.

I'm a newbie both in linux and slackware so I don't really know what's already here besides pico and vi.

Thanks for any help

Emacs and VIM can be configured to do syntax highlighting and indentation. I prefer KATE because you don't have to do much manual configuration. The only downside is that you can't use KATE in text only mode.

For most programming I recommend jEdit, but it may not match your needs.
If you want a full IDE, checkout KDevelop or Eclipse.
As usual, doing a search on freshmeat.net or sourceforge.net for text editors, etc. should help you out. If there is one thing Linux has in spades, it's text editors.

I use KDE only for my GUI and I use Kate for my editor. I tend to use Kate for all of my text editing, even the simplest of text files, although I'm trying to get into a habit of using KEdit for very simple files. I don't do any C programming, but I am continuing to learn more about bash programming and I like Kate's syntax highlighting for that. I also use Kate for some HTML editing.

Kate can provides tabs---sort of. There is a pre-packaged plug-in that you need to enable to provide that functionality.

I wish some more Kate plug-ins would appear, however. For example, today I wanted to sort a simple text file that I was editing in Kate. Yes, that is easily done from the command line with the sort command, but I would enjoy seeing that type of tool in Kate. I guess I got spoiled over the years with MS Word's built-in sorting.

In text only mode I dislike every editor I've tried because none use a menuing system similar to that provided in the KDE (or Windows) GUI. I tolerate vim, however, which provides syntax highlighting.

You might want to investigate Quanta Plus. I am just getting started with that environment. As already mentioned, because you are interested in C, check out KDevelop. Both tools should already be installed on your Slackware-KDE system.

Is everything in Slackware a huge ugly ordeal to install?

> Both tools should already be installed on your Slackware-KDE system


I did not include KDE. I did not think I would need. I usually use MATE, but I thought I get by with XFCE. Surprised XFCE does not have an editor.

There may be lots of editors with Linux, but it seems nothing will install in Slackware without a fight.

Save yourself a lot of trouble and re-install Slackware. Make it a full install this time and all will work the way you expect

You replied to a comment from 12 years ago. Whatever issues you're having today are probably not related.

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If you keep trying to use it like it's Ubuntu, yes. Just install the KDE group if you want to use KDE apps.

Oh, and don't necro-bump.

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Most things are trivial to install, but only if you install all of Slackware's base packages. They have all been tested together and shipped together, and provide the baseline environment targeted by optional and third-party packages.

If a third-party package is expecting a library to be there because it is part of the Slackware environment, and it's not there because you didn't install it, then of course you will have problems.

Opt for "full" mode when installing Slackware to avoid such problems.

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