best text editor for Ubuntu

Text Editor is one of the most basic and must required application, for every users(it doesn’t matter where they comes in – novice , intermediate or advanced category). Text Editor is basically used to create/edit simple text documents(e.g *.txt),i.e to manipulate the text without any formatting information. Windows NT based OS(e.g Windows XP,Vista or 7)  comes with a default – text editor called Notepad (The worst text editor of this planet(or may be in this universe,but I’m not sure about that)).

Ubuntu (10.04/10.10/11.04(Natty Narwhal)) or any other Linux based distribution also comes with some default text editor, but it depends on the distro as well as the desktop(like GNOME or KDE or LMDE or XFCE) you are using; such as- GNOME desktop package contains gedit text editor by default while the KDE desktop package has kate and so on.

In GNU/Linux both type of text editors – command line and GUI, are popular. Some popular/top GUI text editors are emacs,gedit,kate etc., and the popular/awesome command line editors are Vim/vi,Nano etc. Therefore a lot of text editors are available for Ubuntu, So you might be thinking – “what text editor I should use ?”, “what editor is best for programming/coding?”, “Is there any TextMate(The most popular code editor for Mac OS X) like editor is available for Ubuntu?”. Relax, Ubuntu has the best text editor on this planet(or may be in this universe,but I’m not sure about that).

gedit – The Best Text Editor for Ubuntu

Vow! gedit is best?, it is already installed on my Ubuntu. Yeah! you are right, gedit comes by default, not only with Ubuntu but also with other Linux based OS e.g Fedora,Linux Mint,Debian etc, which uses GNOME as a desktop environment. gedit comes with Gnome desktop package, it is free,open source and cross-platform application. The latest stable version is 2.30.3. it is a UTF compatible text editor,with simple and easy to use interface. gedit is very flexible; so here is the one snapshot of gedit on my Ubuntu 10.10 desktop, after tweaking the gedit to look like TextMate.

why gedit is the best text /coding /programming editor ?

• it is fast,light weight and very easy to use.
• it provides Syntax Coloring(through template mechanism, so it can be changed/adjusted according to the need) for all common programming languages like C,C++,java,ruby,python,perl,php,javascript, etc
• it is very flexible and modular
• its features can be easily extended/altered, using plugins(e.g file browser plugins,auto complete plugins etc)

That’s all ..if you think that, any other text editor is better, or whatever, express your thought through comments.