Gedit Too Bloated - Leafpad rocks

[OffHand]

Hi all
I have been using Linux for a couple of months now and I am very happy with it.
My crappy system is stable as a rock and I can do 99% of the things I did on my Windows systems. I dual boot for the 1% that is left ;)
I use text editors a lot and untill now I've always used gedit because it's somehow similar to Notepad and is Ubuntu's default basic text editor.
But it always annoyed me how slow it was (especially starting up).
So today I installed Leafpad and it flies. It's superfast and does basicly everything a basic text editor should do. I am very fond of it.
I'm writing this for two reasons. The first is that there might be other people who have been looking for a text editor that is lighter than Gedit. Try Leafpad!
The second one is that I wonder why Gedit is so slow/bloated. I gotta admit it has a bit more features than Leafpad but if I want features I will launch Abiword or Open Office. I would like to hear you thoughts on this. Should Leafpad be the default simple text editor or are you happy with Gedit? Or am I just whining? I have no interest in bashing Gedit but it is a bit too bloated for a basic text editor in my opinion.

I have added a poll.

[egon spengler]

am I just whining?

Probably, yeah

[OffHand]

Probably, yeah
Haha I knew this would happen when I typed this.

[curuxz]

Personaly I do use bluefish for stuff bluefish was not ment for lol, but as a KDE user I despise Kate, it is such a peice of junk. The idea of auto loading previously closed files, which in my case results in it trying to establish ftp connections all over the place, is a morronic idea. If I want a file open I will open it myself!!!

Leafpad is cool :)

[shrimphead]

I voted for terminal based text editors, personally I use nano a lot, but that's because most of the editing I do is on config files so I'm usually in the terminal anyway. It's distracting to have to switch between 2 windows when you can do it in one :D

however I agree with your sentiment, leafpad rocks (as does mousepad), much better than gedit

[imagine]

For the record: It's OpenOffice.org Write. Word is something else =)

[shrimphead]

For the record: It's OpenOffice.org Write. Word is something else =)

actually it's Writer, just to be pedantic ;)

[OffHand]

I was looking in the Gnome menu and there it says OpenOffice.org Word Processor :rolleyes:

[curuxz]

I was looking in the Gnome menu and there it says OpenOffice.org Word Processor :rolleyes:

Doesnt on mine, it says OOWriter but then im in KDE

[Lord Illidan]

I don't know anyone who would be insane enough to load up OOffice to read a simple text file... no syntax highlighting, slow and bulky, and too many features you won't need.

I like Gedit for its syntax highlighting. Not too slow, either.
Kate is also good, a bit slow, though to load.
Vi is great for terminal apps.
Leafpad is not bad, but lack of syntax highlighting is a big no no.
Abiword, faster than openoffice but no syntax highlighting.

So gedit wins..

[OffHand]

I don't know anyone who would be insane enough to load up OOffice to read a simple text file... no syntax highlighting, slow and bulky, and too many features you won't need.

I like Gedit for its syntax highlighting. Not too slow, either.
Kate is also good, a bit slow, though to load.
Vi is great for terminal apps.
Leafpad is not bad, but lack of syntax highlighting is a big no no.
Abiword, faster than openoffice but no syntax highlighting.

So gedit wins..
I put in OO just so it was an option one could pick ;)
I see the advange of the syntax highlight feature when you are working on coding stuff. I Probably would have used Gedit myself for coding in that case.

[Lord Illidan]

I put in OO just so it was an option one could pick ;)
I see the advange of the syntax highlight feature when you are working on coding stuff. I Probably would have used Gedit myself for coding in that case.

Yep, I didn't mention that piece. I use those apps frequently for opening up scripts, etc.. Highlighting comes in very useful

[PsychoTrauma]

It all depends on what i'm doing.

If i'm editing system files I use nano.

If i'm writing a basic text file I use gedit.

If i'm writing a paragraph or a report I use openoffice.

I voted on terminal (nano) since I use that more than the others.

[fuscia]

my needs for a text editor are fairly simple. i came across mousepad fairly early and used to use it all the time. then, i started using nano and found the keyboard shortcuts to be too addictive. i just tried leafpad after opening this threadd. it's a bit like mousepad, except that it has few dependencies than mousepad. as a minimalist, i appreciate that. if it weren't for nano, i'd probably use it.

[YourSurrogateGod]

I like the tabs that Gedit has. When you have 3+ source files open at the same time, it's nice to have everything more sane and contained within one program.

[ComplexNumber]

gedit is great, but leafpad is awesome as a simple editor. i use the latter for opening up files now becuase it loads up instantaneously even on large files whereas gedit can take about 1-2 seconds.

[-Rick-]

kwrite

[Luggy]

Syntax Highlighting and tabs FTW!

Gedit 1
Leafpad zip.

I also like abiword for things like reports and vim for really quick stuff but when I need to write some code I want an application that can at least do syntax highlighting.

Leafpad isn't bad, I just can't see myself having a use for it compared to the other tools I use.

[G Morgan]

I tend to use Kate these days because I use Kdevelop a lot. It makes sense to load both because theres practically little memory hit to use Kate while Kdevelop is open (not that I'm starving for RAM but I still like efficiency). Also since Kdevelop uses embedded Kate to do editing then I'm using the same text editor in different locations as opposed to opening something like Emacs and having a completely different interface to my IDE.

[stoffe]

I like the tabs that Gedit has. When you have 3+ source files open at the same time, it's nice to have everything more sane and contained within one program.
I hate the tabs that Gedit has. When you have a few more than those three, they start disappearing off the side, voiding the whole point of tabs (quick access and easy overview).

If Gedit (or rather GTK+) fixes that tab issue, and a decent project manager plugin arrives (I've heard it's on the way) Gedit could be good. It has some good things going for it, like snippets.

[jdong]

GEdit has definitely grown from a "notepad clone" to a powerful programmer's editor that still keeps a self-explanatory, simple interface.

If you're looking for something light on low-end hardware, GEdit is not for you, and Leafpad may be a better choice (as well as other editors that share similar goals)

I regularly use systems in the 500-700MHz range, and GEdit seems fine on it, so I'd say for a large portion of computer users, GEdit would not feel slow.

[CronoDekar]

Cool, I hadn't known about Leafpad before reading this thread, and now that I found it I really like it. I'll probably be using it more in the future.

[airtonix]

mmmm strange....on my 400mhz system gedit was my bane.....toatly annoying.

snow on my p41.6ghz 512mb ram it runs ....better...

still if leafpad had code colouring , and block indenting and snippets like gedit does then i'd proly land my self a prog just as slow as gedit....

wow check the logic...1.2....3

[Mr. Picklesworth]

For quick note taking, I use Tomboy :)
Great little program, that one...

Otherwise I use gEdit. It's served me very well for PHP stuff!

I'll look at Leafpad today when I get home, though...
I do quite like the simple text editor that comes with Xubuntu, called Mousepad. It's very fast and very simple!

[ComplexNumber]

leafpad is one of my 'essential' apps.

[bastiegast]

The first thing I did when I opened this thread was:
sudo aptitude install leafpad:cool: Seconds later it was on my computer. And thats why I like ubuntu :D

How on earth a simple text editor with syntax highlighting can become bloated remains a mystery to me, but fact is gedit does take long to load, even on my amd64 system with 1 gig ram ](*,) . Leafpad showed up immediatly. So i guess i will be using this for small tasks like: sudo leafpad /etc/apt/sources.list, but for doing coding and such i dont care about load times so much and i'd care more about syntax highlighting and tabs.

[kinson]

Nice little thread here. I didn't know about leafpad before this.

I'm using an AMD64 system too (albeit running Ubuntu i386) with 1gb ram, and I find Gedit to be too slow to open simple text files (such as readme.txt or whatever). It takes about a good 2-3 seconds, which is really irritating. Especially when people see I'm using "linux"(Ubuntu), they ask me "is it faster?", and if I open a text file with Gedit, it'll surely send them running back to *******... :p

Anyways, I'll give Leafpad a try when I get home :D

Cheers,
Kinson

[fuscia]

'replace' converted me to leafpad. i still use nano too, but changing fonts in openbox themes is made much easier with that 'replace' thing in leafpad.

[dasunst3r]

Although a bit primitive, I like nano the best. I edit my config files there!

[OffHand]

I still like Leafpad. It's speed is wonderful.

[evenjn]

I imagine it depends on what you are using the text editor for.
Personally, I don't care about syntax highlighting, since I use text files just to write down small notes. To this purpose, Leafpad works much better than GEdit.

Besides my personal preference, I think that Ubuntu should replace GEdit with Leafpad, since the average Ubuntu user is not meant to be a programmer (am I correct?), and if you are not a programmer, GEdit has little more to offer and this does not justify the considerable extra time it takes to operate.

Maybe it is just a problem in my computer, but whenever I save a file I am working on, my CPU works 100% for 1 or 2 seconds, and the system is kinda frozen. With Leafpad this does not happen.

[javyn999]

I like leafpad too. Even though it doesn't have the color coding, you can display line numbers, which is far more useful a feature to me. I haven't found that option in gedit.

[AllRadioisDead]

Is there any way to format text with gedit? Stupid question I know, but I can't find it anywhere. It would be my ideal text editor if it weren't for that, it already has spellcheck.

[MaxIBoy]

As a programmer, I very much appreciate Gedit for all its features-- but only after installing the main gedit-plugins package, plus the split-screen plugin.

@ihermit: No. By definition, no plaintext editors have formatting features.

@javyn999: You must not have been looking hard. ;) Edit->preferences, check "display line numbers."
EDIT: jpeddicord beat me.

[jpeddicord]

I like leafpad too. Even though it doesn't have the color coding, you can display line numbers, which is far more useful a feature to me. I haven't found that option in gedit.

Edit > Preferences; Display line numbers. Can't miss it.

++ to gedit-plugins, those take gedit from great to awesome.

Edit: Hmm, didn't notice that this thread is two years old. Since I've already posted, I'll refrain from acting on it, but if another staffer wants to...

[overdrank]

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