text editors

We have lots of different text editors on the CS machines: vim, emacs, vscode, atom, sublime, and others. See below for more details. Email local-staff if there’s an editor you love that we don’t already have.

vscode

Code editing. Redefined. Free. Built on open source. Runs everywhere. What more could you want…

Note: just type “code” in a terminal to start vscode on the CS computers.

atom

Described as “a hackable text editor for the 21st Century”, atom is a fairly new editor, and the one we sometimes use in our intro CS classes. Atom has lots of plugins…

Sadly, atom is being sunsetted

vim

A commonly-used old-school editor, found on all linux/unix machines. Has two modes (command mode and insert mode), that take some getting used to if you’ve used other editors. Try vimtutor for a built-in tutorial. Use Esc :wq to quit. :)

emacs

Another commonly-used old-school editor found on many unix machines. Has a built-in tutorial. Use Ctrl-x Ctrl-c to quit.

sublime

Another fairly new editor. Described as “a sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose”. The license prevents us from installing it system-wide, but you can download and try it for free.

sublime home page

Here’s one way to download and try on the CS systems:

download the 64-bit linux tarball
if you don’t already have a ~/bin directory, make one:
```
  cd
  mkdir bin
```

move the tarball (in ~/Downloads ?) to the bin directory and un-tar it:

  mv ~/Downloads/sublime_text_3_(...)_x64.tar.bz2 ~/bin
  cd ~/bin 
  tar xvjf sublime_text_3_(...)_x64.tar.bz2

try running it:
```
  ~/bin/sublime_text_3/sublime_text
```
link it back to the bin directory, so you don’t have to type all that:
```
  cd ~/bin
  ln -s sublime_text_3/sublime_text .
```

At this point you should be able to type sublime_text from anywhere, and it will start. You could also add an alias (like st3) to your ~/.bashrc file (just edit your .bashrc file and look for the aliases section). Also see Adrian’s sublime page for errors after installing Package Control.

looking for other editors

You can search for ubuntu/debian packages (software we could easily install on the CS computers) with apt-cache search _______. For example, to search for myfaveditor:

apt-cache search myfaveditor

To see what packages we already have installed, use the dpkg -l command. By itself, it lists all packages. You can also pipe the output to grep to search for something. Try this:

dpkg -l | grep myfaveditor