In my most recent series of articles I have been highlighting different Linux text editors. Today I will illustrate yet another GUI Linux editor, this time around – Leafpad.

If you’ve been following my series on Linux text editors you have read about a number of different variations on this theme. There is another editor, very similar to Leafpad, that was developed to be very Xfce friendly. That editor – Mousepad.

We conclude our whimsical jaunt down text editor lane with a look at the KDE take on that always-necessary tool - the text editor. The KDE version is called Kate. Kate takes a different approach to the simplicity most of these tools take.

...the humble Gnome editor is often compared to Windows notepad app. A simple editor with minimal features that is pathetic for anything else.

Not true!

I am partial to the Nano text based editor. For many users that editor (or one like it) is all they need. Because of the simplicity of the tools, why slow down your work with a GUI right? But for some, those GUI-less editors are a big turn off.

"Back in the day, when I was new to [GNU/Linux], joe was the first text editor that I managed to quit without having to reboot my machine. That I am still using it today, many years later, goes to show just how simple yet powerful joe is.

It's no longer a hard-copy world, and most writing tasks don't require all the bells and whistles in heavyweight word processing programs. Text editors are a much more nimble choice. However, not all text editors are alike.

"If you've never been convinced before that Emacs is the text editor in which dreams are made from, or that inside Emacs there are unicorns manipulating your text, don't expect me to convince you [...] You see, Emacs isn't a text editor. Emacs is a programming language that you can use to write your own text editor..."

Using xjed will not make you a Jedi Knight, but it will help you in your quest to become a Jedi-level programmer. Right? Wrong. xjed is a text editor that was designed with programmers in mind.