I have been using KDE via Kubuntu for about 2 years now, other distros with Gnome before that. Based upon the name (KDE Advanced Text Editor, K.A.T.E.) I always thought of Kate as an alternative to Notepad++ or something like that. Like a highend note-taking app.
I recently started using Kate for managing my Docker-Compose yaml files on my homelab, using the Git functionality to sync to my repos and doing some web development. It’s basically an alternative to VSCode or Codium.
Thanks to the devs who work on Kate . If you don’t hear it enough we appreciate you!
I also really like it, it is fast, OS native, has polkit integration for system files, LSP and linting works too, for example shellcheck for posix sh or bash scripts.
Have not used some of the features yet
KATE replaced VSCode and Codium for my open source development work.
I love Kate
I use it on gnome and it is simply fantastic
+1
I use Zed these days, but I’ll never uninstall Kate.
Zed is quite impressive, it opens like instantly when you double click it.
VS Codium on the other hand takes a few seconds to display everything correctly. Yes once its open it speeds up and is not that slow anymore, but compared to Zed it does still feel very heavy.
God I love Kate. Being able to just randomly open any file and get syntax highlighting and tabs makes dealing with system files so much easier
Curious if anyone knows this, does it use the same buffering system as N++? Meaning, if I open a log file in N++ that is still being written to it never has an issue with blocking the program writing to the file since (it seems) to open it in a separate buffer that can get updated as the file does. A very handy feature for the logs I use, and if Kate can do that I’m all in.
I will test it myself obv, but perhaps someone will be able to answer before I’m able to test, and then also the information will be here :)
Yeah, Kate is excellent. I use it on my Linux stuff at home but I use it on Windows at work also.
Me too, it’s been such a blessing!
but I use it on Windows at work also.
Huh… And here I was, never even considering that somebody may have ported Kate to Windows. I should try it, for the rare instance I’m editing something on Windows!
tons of KDE software is on the windows store, from KDE themselves, even (i can’t link the platform filter directly, just change the “all platforms” dropdown to “windows”)
God damnit. I never knew Konsole was available on windows.
KDE connect works too
I absolutely love Kate, I’ve been using it since 2019 when I switched to Linux and I needed a replacement for Notepad++, and I prefer it to more sophisticated editors like VS Code.
Ctrl + Shift + B is what converted me to a kate worshipper!
TIL about Block Select!
Also Alt+click to add multiple cursors.
Indeed. It lets you do so much with that little feature. Not just select but edit also. My mind was blown. Made adding prefixes to each new line a piece of cake.
Kate was my first “real” code editor coming from windows notepad back in the 90’s. It was my first taste of syntax highlighting.
Fond memories.
I just took to using it since it was the default pre-installed editor when I went KDE.
I’ve been able to do everything I needed in it, all the way up to writing fairly complex python.
No complaints. In fact I quite like it.
Kate is awesome I use it every day; if not as a scratch pad, as an editor.
Yeah, its great. I use it daily.
It’s my fave too. It handles opening files over the network very well and I like the scrolling system on the right.
Featherpad is my alternative when I want something I can paste into on the screen right now as Kate loads a little slowly.
when I want something I can paste into on the screen right now as Kate loads a little slowly
Fun fact I just learned recently: If you have text in your clipboard, you can paste that directly into the file manager (or the desktop background). It will prompt you for a filename, and then create a file with the pasted text in it.
If all you want to do is paste some text, you can actually do that without using any text editor at all.
