Visual Studio Code alternatives for Linux? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago by MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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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 93 points 11 months ago

Vscodium

[-] simonweiss@lemmy.ml 34 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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 5 points 11 months ago

You don't need that when you use NixOS 😋

[-] sprl@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

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

[-] BurnedOliveTree@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

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

[-] lenathaw@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago

I use Codium on both PopOS and MacOSi, it's a bit slow to start, but performance is good, but I don't know how it compares to stock VSCode since I never tested it. But overall I'm very happy with it.

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[-] kool_newt@lemm.ee 29 points 11 months ago

For anyone that used Atom, check out

https://pulsar-edit.dev/

Fuck microsoft

[-] Daeraxa@lemmy.ml 13 points 11 months ago

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 11 points 11 months ago

I would suggest adding some screenshots to your website

[-] Daeraxa@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months 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.

[-] kool_newt@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

Oh nice! I was super excited to find your project, was not about to let MS drive me into their arms and couldn't find anything else that met my needs.

Thanks for your work!

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[-] NaoPb@beehaw.org 3 points 11 months ago

Thanks. I remember a while ago I was looking at Atom and Brackets. But I see both of those have been put down. At least the linux version has as far as the latter is concerned.

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[-] Daeraxa@lemmy.ml 22 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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.

[-] AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

Lite-XL looks really cool, it's awesome to finally find a modern editor that is not using webview bloat for the UI.

[-] CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml 4 points 11 months ago

Thanks for your work on Pulsar. Atom was my go to simple editor before MS killed it off. I'm still fuming now. I really need to try Pulsar :). Been using Kate for now.

[-] o1o12o21@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago

Playing around with lite-xl, thanks for the recommendation. Lacks many features for now, but seems to have a huge potential.

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[-] abuttifulpigeon@lemmy.world 19 points 11 months ago

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

[-] g7s@lemmy.ml 17 points 11 months ago

Lunarvim

[-] simonweiss@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago

Actually a pretty good on-the-go alternative to GUI IDEs. Always using it to quickly edit configs and scripts.

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[-] nope@yiffit.net 16 points 11 months ago

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

[-] Ascend910@lemmy.ml 10 points 11 months ago

Maybe codium will be what your looking for

[-] leraje@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I have VSCodium installed via flatpak. Works perfectly.

Edit: has open-source extensions too.

[-] Lauchmelder@feddit.de 10 points 11 months 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

[-] monobot@lemmy.ml 9 points 11 months 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

[-] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 11 months ago

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.

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[-] yote_zip@pawb.social 9 points 11 months ago

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

[-] simonweiss@lemmy.ml 4 points 11 months ago

Why on Earth did I read this comment? 🥲 This app is so painfully fast and crisp! And it has Vim and SSH out of the box. And its own plugin marketplace... Now I have no choice but to suffer every time I open VSCode(ium) in hope that development continues and soon I will have the thing to ditch it for and finally get rid of my allergies to Electron.

[-] TrivialBetaState@sopuli.xyz 9 points 11 months 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.

[-] Solaris1789@jlai.lu 8 points 11 months ago

Vscodium or Geany

[-] NeryK@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 months ago

I use VSCode myself nowadays, but I have some colleagues who prefer Qt Creator for C++ development (our builds are based on CMake and GCC/CLang). It is open source and not tied to developing with the Qt framework.

[-] erAck@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 11 months ago

I heard good things about Geany.

[-] Rodeo@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 months 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)

[-] ed_cock@kbin.social 6 points 11 months ago

Visual Studio Code is kinda heavy, so why not Netbeans or Eclipse?

[-] falsem@kbin.social 4 points 11 months ago

A real wise guy, eh?

[-] perivesta@feddit.de 6 points 11 months ago

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

[-] django@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 11 months ago

I don't understand the meaning of "visual editor" in the context of "text editor". But i can tell you, that i am a happy user of Spacemacs, a distribution of GNU Emacs. Doom Emacs seems also to be pretty popular. One of my favorite emacs packages is the git client "magit": https://video.emacs.ch/w/kFF1N8kveg3eCx86tU6aMW

[-] ed_cock@kbin.social 4 points 11 months ago

If you program in Python check out Spyder, some other languages also have specialized IDEs that can be really good.

[-] Marxine@lemmy.ml 4 points 11 months ago

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 5 points 11 months ago

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

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[-] Treeniks@lemmy.ml 4 points 11 months ago

Now it absolutely isn't open source or even free, so if that is a must feel free to ignore me, but I personally do still really like using Sublime. Once you install SublimeLSP I find it genuinely really clean to work with. And even though it's technically not free, you can use its free trial version for as long as you want (with the only drawback being an annoying popup), if you do buy it it's a one-time payment, not a subscription, and the package eco system is mostly open source (SublimeLSP e.g. is open source).

Again, not free, but much faster, more light weight and imo cleaner than VSCode, and definitely not very corpo given the rather small size of Sublime HQ.

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[-] rikudou@lemmings.world 3 points 11 months ago

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 8 points 11 months ago

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 6 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] pjhenry1216@kbin.social 4 points 11 months ago

Considering the context of the thread, this isn't really a useful take. They were talking about free software (open source at that). They were warning them it won't be free forever and, seeing as how that is a requirement, then yeah, it would be taken away.

There's no need to be condescending when you're in the wrong conversation with your opinion. No one said you can't pay for things or that it's not ok.

So your high horse isn't needed here.

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