Notepad++ sits at an odd place. It’s heavier than Vim or Emacs. It’s not as feature-rich as some IDEs. That’s why it failed in Linux where alternatives are many.
It’s lightweight, can run portably, and has some oddly specific but useful features such as dual window linked scrolling, syntax highlighting, and even allows regex for search/replace which is neat.
You can use it for coding (I use it for short python scripts), but that isn’t it’s main use.
VScode is, primarily, an IDE - not really something you use as a plain text editor.
I’m still looking for a Linux replacement with syntax highlighting like Notepad++. Kate is good, even better performance, but no UI for highlighting. The coding for syntax is way over my head from what I saw.
I’ve recently switched from np++ to Sublime for some non-standard issues – I would say that could be closer in performance & extensibility to Vim/Emacs; though limited to GUI and non-FOSS of course.
For those who want to stick with Windows, Notepad++ is far superior anyway.
Oddly enough, Notepad++ doesn’t really have a full featured native Linux alternative (as of my last deep search around June 2025).
Geany and Notepad++ are built on the same text editing component.
https://www.geany.org/
I already use geany as my main DE! It’s got a lot of great features, but it’s not really a notepad app.
Notepad++ sits at an odd place. It’s heavier than Vim or Emacs. It’s not as feature-rich as some IDEs. That’s why it failed in Linux where alternatives are many.
CudaText is pretty good replacement for notepad++
Never heard of it, so now I will take a look. Thanks for sharing.
How’s Notepad++ compare to VS Code (or VSCodium) they seem pretty similar
Notepad++ is, at its heart, a text editor.
It’s lightweight, can run portably, and has some oddly specific but useful features such as dual window linked scrolling, syntax highlighting, and even allows regex for search/replace which is neat.
You can use it for coding (I use it for short python scripts), but that isn’t it’s main use.
VScode is, primarily, an IDE - not really something you use as a plain text editor.
I’m still looking for a Linux replacement with syntax highlighting like Notepad++. Kate is good, even better performance, but no UI for highlighting. The coding for syntax is way over my head from what I saw.
I’ve recently switched from np++ to Sublime for some non-standard issues – I would say that could be closer in performance & extensibility to Vim/Emacs; though limited to GUI and non-FOSS of course.