Text Editors

Updated 6 February 2026

I've been using Geany as my text editor almost as long as I've been using Linux as my operating system. Until December 2025 that is. I'm picky with my text editor. It has to have session-restore, and it has to have text sorting. It has to remember open tabs.

When installing it on Linux Mint, I use the software manager. I install "Geany" and then "Geany-plugins", which is a meta package for multiple plugins.

Geany doesn't have a sort function built-in, but it can be added by enabling the "Line Operations" plugin. It's been a long time since I've sorted lines using Geany.

Xed

Xed is the default text editor for Linux Mint. It's bare-bones and doesn't do the things I want it to do. I rarely use it, and when I do, it's either from the terminal or I'm using it to quickly sort things in text files instead of messing with Geany.

Other Text Editors

I've tested other text editors, too many to mention, recommended by people in forums. I found CudaText interesting, but I ultimately decided to spend some time with Kate, which is odd considering it's a KDE application. It saves sessions, tabs, and has sorting built-in.

After using Kate for a few days, I went back to Geany. It's easy and familiar. I'll probably use Kate if and when I start using a distribution with the KDE Plasma desktop environment because Kate is usually already installed.