What is the lightest .txt editor (what is a clone of windows notepad)

[skoggo]

Windows notepad refuses to crash, and it refuses to lag. No matter how bogged down windows becomes, if you can open a notepad window than notepad will work perfectly fine.

I am searching for the Linux equivalent of windows notepad, the most light weight and lag proof text editor out there. Something that is a computerised type writer and nothing more.

[The Cog]

nano is often recommended for beginners. And is is part of the default install. Just open a terminal and type nano followed by the file name, e.g.

nano test.txt

[Impavidus]

Just checked with a 2.2MB plain text file. Nano needs 9MB to just open it (no editing yet), vim needs 14MB and mousepad needs 55MB (resident memory as reported by top). Nano and vim aren't exactly Windows Notepad clones, as they run in a terminal. Much of their lightness comes from not having to handle a window, font rendering and a mouse.

[vanadium]

The default text editor, gedit, will satisfy your needs as a graphical text editor. mousepad, the default text editor of XFCE, is very lightweight.

[grahammechanical]

If you are really serious about Windows Notepad then open Ubuntu software and search for Notepad3 (WINE). That is the notepad application that comes with an install of WINE. Someone has made a snap packaged version of it. So, there you have a Windows Notepad app running on Linux.

Regards

[TheFu]

There is only 1 editor for all platforms. vi/vim.
Don't bother with any others. Vim is infinitely extensible and 1000x more efficient than any others. I've probably seen over 100 different editors in my career and use at least 20 extensively. Vim is the most pervasive, available, and efficient of all of them. I've never seen any editor beside vi on a router. It is a stripped down version, but it is still vi.

People who don't use vim have never seen vim in the hands of an expert.

Nano is a toy compared to every other editor, including notepad. May as well use cp file < rather than nano.

[vo-nguyen]

You think nano is a toy? What about pico?

[GhX6GZMB]

How about ed?


[tongue-in-cheek]

[DuckHook]

Others have answered you directly and given you some alternatives. I have nothing to add to those good suggestions. But let me try instead to address the context behind your question.

1. While I can't say that notepad in and of itself has crashed on me, it has died and lost my unsaved work when Windows itself crashed.
2. In the Windows world, when Windows crashes, all is lost. You have no choice but to reboot and mourn the work that is now just scattered electrons.
3. In contrast, in the Linux world, the whole graphical environment is just a pretty dress that rests on top of a much more solid foundation. On the few occasions when my graphical environment has crashed, I have found that that foundation was still fine. I just had to relaunch the graphical environment without having to reboot or even logout/login.
4. If you run graphical editors like gedit or mousepad, then in the event your GUI dies they will die just as completely as notepad does when Windows crashes.
5. But if you first launch a command line multiplexer like screen or tmux and then run a purely command line editor like nano within it, then even if your graphical environment crashes, you can almost always reattach to the multiplexer session without losing your work. You could even kill your graphical session on purpose and not have your editing session compromised. Another example of superior Linux versatility, safety and power.

I use this strategy when I am working on critical system files. I don't want the file to be left in a corrupted state should the graphical environment go down. Mind you, nothing like this has happened for going on 10 years, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Moreover, getting used to command line editors has further benefits: it has allowed me to remotely edit configuration files in distant servers that have no graphical user interface. Combined with the use of the aforementioned multiplexer and such delicate surgery can even be done quite safely.

The only point that I will contest is that of TheFu's. Vi/Vim is a beast. I consider myself a Linux power user and I cannot get used to it. Given that you are inquiring about a Windows notepad clone, I can confidently say that Vi/Vim is not in the running. Trying to use it will just send you screaming from your keyboard and running for the tranquilizers.

[TheFu]

<snip>
The only point that I will contest is that of TheFu's. Vi/Vim is a beast. I consider myself a Linux power user and I cannot get used to it. Given that you are inquiring about a Windows notepad clone, I can confidently say that Vi/Vim is not in the running. Trying to use it will just send you screaming from your keyboard and running for the tranquilizers.

All true. But I've never seen notepad on any router. Not once. I would call emacs a beast, not vim. Vim is as tiny as you like or as huge as you like thanks to the addon capabilities.
But, someone who thinks they've been hacked might think vim was part of that hack if they didn't know any better. The first time I used vi, I had to power off the computer to get out of it. I had no Unix background at the time and the idea of a modal editor was completely foreign to me. I had been programming on DOS, MS-Windows, OS/2, MacOS and TSO/ISPF for years ... but that didn't provide the background for using vi/vim.

To the OP: There are GUI editors and terminal editors. All GUI programs, including editors, have the same fatal flaw in that a GUI is required to use them. Unix/Linux servers typically do not have any GUI, so for people who do server work, none of those are worth our time.
GUI editors tend to become bloated as the development team decides to add one more menu or one more menu item to the feature list. Look at VC or Netbeans. Those are crazy bloated.
Then there are the minimal GUI editors like GEdit, Kate xedit, pluma, ... that's about it. Those are a little like nano, but with a few more features, like spell checking. Spell checking is a dangerous thing in config files, however.
There are a bunch of middle-of-the-road editors like Atom, Geany, and almost 1 for each major scripting language.
Which editor is "best" quickly becomes a personal choice based on the type of file editing you do. If you edit python, Atom would be suggested. IF you edit a mix of different languages and want a little debugger and compile/link help, geany is not quite a full IDE, but more than a simple editor.

Do you need syntax highlighting for different languages - XML, YAML, JSON, HTML, CSS, C, C++, C#, D#, perl, python, java, javascript, ruby, php, and more? That's where extensible editors like vim are helpful. https://vimawesome.com/ has nearly 1000 addons to handle almost anything you might need. http://www.drchip.org/astronaut/vim/index.html has some interesting addons too. These are loaded only when needed. It is the custom kitchen sink solution, infinitely extensible and easy for the end-user to create their own addons to accomplish almost anything using macros and both internal and external tools. Learning enough vi to get around takes 10 minutes. vimtutor will teach that. But you can spend a lifetime learning more. I try to add 1 new vim capability to my list of tricks every week. 52 tricks doesn't sound like many, but it explodes as you learn about addons and quickly your mind creates "modes of thought" to be efficient in vim in very smart ways. Sorta like how mountain people learn practical ways to find and store food for long winters. Every new vim capability that I learn is another can in my cellar for use later.

I get excited about vim, because it is so amazing, but it definitely takes time to get passed the beginner level, then the universe of editing becomes open to you. Before that, you are stuck on a 1 track line between 2 subway stops that goes just between those 2 stops and nowhere else.

But if nano works for you, great!


Whenever editing system files, be sure to use sudoedit - that is compatible with any editor you choose to use. Just set your EDITOR environment variable to the program you wish to use.