Best Editor
Read on to see which editor is the LJ reader favorite.
Here's the breakdown (all editors listed below were nominated by readers):
- Vim: 35%
- GNU Emacs: 19%
- Sublime Text: 10%
- Atom: 8%
- nano: 6%
- Geany: 5%
- Gedit: 4%
- Kate: 4%
- KWrite: 1%
- Other: 7%
Readers' Choice winner Vim is an extremely powerful editor with a user interface based on Bill Joy's 40-plus-year-old vi, but with many improved-upon features including extensive customization with key mappings and plugins. Linux Journal reader David Harrison points out another great thing about Vim "is that it's basically everywhere. It's available on every major platform."
The very features that make Vim so versatile also have been known to intimidate beginners. Perhaps that's why Linux Journal has featured nearly 100 articles on Vim so far. Readers generally agree though, any learning curve is worth the effort, and again this year, they award Vim the Best Editor title.
Richard Stallman's GNU Emacs comes in a respectable second place in this year's Linux Journal Readers' Choice Awards Best Editor category. Emacs is often referred to as "the most powerful editor ever made". Interesting pop culture trivia: Emacs was featured in the movie Tron: Legacy.