# comparing text editors

posted on January 8, 2026 by Lee Cattarin

- software

I'm fucking depressed. No, not like mental health depressed (okay, look, that too, but that's not relevant here). Looking to switch text editors, I reviewed 6 different options...and what I found didn't thrill me.

> this post contains comparison tables that are far more viewable on desktop/tablet

## the editors

the editors I reviewed, in no particular order, are:

- VSCode (my current daily driver which I've been wanting to leave behind for a while now)
- Zed (an editor I've been tentatively interested in)
- Kate (recommended to me semi-recently on the fediverse, but one I quickly wrote off at the time because of clunkiness)
- Lapce (recommended via fedi)
- Pulsar (a fork of the discontinued Atom editor, recommended again by fedi, in the course of this review)
- and finally, Sublime Text (my daily driver back in college)

## the qualities

I reviewed looking for 5 major functional qualities that I considered to be my most useful or heavily-used features:

- `.editorconfig` support
- find and replace with regex support
- WSL support (including, because apparently this is an issue, the ability to delete files from inside the editor) (this is the highest priority - I do all work in WSL)
- multi-edit (e.g. ability to select multiple instances of a word and edit them all) (this is the most discardable functionality, as it can be replaced with find-and-replace)
- markdown preview

3 less important, but preferred, aesthetic qualities:

- clean, modern UI
- file type icons
- ability to customize the color scheme (ideally per-color settings, but that's uncommon)

and finally, 3 ethical and trustworthiness qualities:

- no LLM features
- for products with LLM features: single setting to turn off LLM features
- trust that product longevity will not be affected by LLM-generated code

(in other words: no LLMs).

## the comparison charts

### functional qualities

| `.editorconfig` | find-and-replace | WSL | multi-edit | `.md` preview
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
VSCode | yes[1] | yes | yes[1] | yes | yes
Zed | yes[1] | yes | yes | yes | yes
Kate | yes | yes | no[2] | yes | no
Lapce | no | yes | no[3] | yes | no
Pulsar | no | yes | no[3] | yes | yes
Sublime Text | yes | yes | no[3][4] | yes | no[5]

[1] extension needed: VSCode `.editorconfig`, VSCode WSL, Zed `.editorconfig`

[2] I could open a WSL directory in Kate, but couldn't see any files. I confirmed that opening a Windows directory worked as expected.

[3] opening the project worked fine, but I couldn't delete files. In Sublime Text's case, they were deleted but still shown in the file view.

[4] saving a new file opens the save menu in the Windows File Explorer, which frankly makes me a bit afraid. Touching your WSL files from Windows is generally a bad idea.

[5] I explored two different add-on packages for Markdown preview support. Markdown Live Preview and MarkdownPreview. Markdown Live Preview opened a whole new window scoped only to the specific `.md` file. MarkdownPreview previewed in browser. Neither of these match the behavior I am looking for.

### aesthetic qualities

| UI | file icons | color scheme
--- | --- | --- | ---
VSCode | yes | yes | yes[1]
Zed | yes | yes | yes[2]
Kate | no | yes | yes[2]
Lapce | yes | no | yes[3]
Pulsar | yes | no | yes[1]
Sublime Text | yes | yes | yes

[1] several color schemes available. Further extensions available.

[2] several color schemes available.

[3] only light and dark schemes available. Further plugins available.

### ethical qualities

this is my best guess based on searching online and reviewing the settings; it's kind of hard to really confirm these things. I am judging the last quality - whether or not the devs are using LLMs - based on the existence of `prompts` directories in the projects' repositories.

| no LLM features | LLM kill switch | no LLM code
--- | --- | --- | ---
VSCode | no | no | no[1]
Zed | no | yes | no[2]
Kate | yes | n/a | yes
Lapce | yes | n/a | yes
Pulsar | yes | n/a | yes[3]
Sublime Text | yes | n/a | unknown[4]

[1] prompts directory

[2] looks like at current LLMs are only used for documentation

[3] it's been discussed and sounds currently up for debate: Pulsar, Sublime Text

[4] I couldn't find the source code for Sublime Text online; I assume it's not OSS. If you know where it is, point me in that direction.

## summary

I'll be honest, I just don't know. The functionality is not something I can easily compromise on. TBH, I figured I had pretty basic needs as a developer, but it seems that's not the case! The only editors that meet my functionality needs across the board are also the worst offenders on the LLM front.

at the end of the day, I might just have to keep looking... but regardless, I wanted to publish what I found to help anyone else with similar needs.

## corrections and edits

- Kate does have multi-edit
- Lapce has plugins for further color schemes
- VSCode WSL support requires an extension
- Zed `.editorconfig` support requires an extension

### WSL2 and Linux GUIs

I learned that WSL2 can support GUI apps so I tried this for a few. Pulsar did not work; Sublime Text worked but the UI scale was teensy and was not affected by the `ui_scale` setting.

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