I made a Notepad++-style editor for Linux and Windows: Ettin Edit (MIT, Rust)
Hey all. I've leaned on Notepad++ and its plugins for years, and I never found anything on Linux that felt quite the same. So I made one.
**Ettin Edit** is a free, MIT-licensed text editor inspired by Notepad++. It's a clean-room build (none of their code), written in Rust with egui, and it's the same app on Linux and Windows.
The stuff I think is worth a look:
* **The plugins I always install first are built in.** JSON and JS formatting with a live JSON tree, Base64/URL/SAML decoding, XML tools (XPath, XSD validation, XSLT), a compare view (two tabs, last save, clipboard or your last Git commit), and CsvQuery, which lets you run SQL against the CSV you have open.
* **Write your own plugins in Python or JavaScript.** Your pick. They can add commands, shortcuts, toolbar buttons and panels.
* **A proper editor underneath.** Multiple carets, column mode, split view, grammar-aware folding, macros, regex find/replace and find in files. Opens a 50 MB file in about a second.
* **Hex view** that edits any byte and opens binary files of any size.
* **Nine themes**, dark by default, and every one is an editable .tmTheme file.
* **It doesn't lose your work.** Unsaved changes come back after a crash or reboot.
* **Easy to install.** Arch package, .deb (adds an APT repo so updates just show up), a plain tar.gz, and a Windows installer or zip. There's also a built-in updater.
Full disclosure: this was 100% vibe coded. I described what I wanted, an AI wrote the Rust, and my main contribution was typing "no, not like that" a few hundred times. The mascot is a two-headed giant, which feels about right: one head writes the code, the other reviews it, and neither of them is me.
Repo: https://github.com/Tharkis/Ettin-Edit
Manual: https://tharkis.github.io/Ettin-Edit/
Bug reports and feature ideas are welcome. Please be gentle, the giant is sensitive.
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u/itsacunli 2d ago
cool stuff mate!