1w ago

Geany 2.1 Lightweight IDE Brings Smoother UI, New Filetypes, and Theming Support

I have seen Geany around and am pretty intrigued by the update. I primarily use Kate but would love to hear folks' thoughts on Geany and if anyone recommends it.

6 comments

It's a REALLY good software for a lightweight dev environment. You need to be a more experienced user than a typical "IDE" audience (or rather, more patience to learn and build your flow) but it's a good editor.
- Sounds perfect for me! I tend to do a lot of lightweight web stuff so I will definitely be giving it a go shortly! Love Kate but I am always curious to try out new editors. Appreciate the recommendation!
I use it, it's fine for stuff you'd use notepad for. For coding I use a full IDE tho.
- Appreciate the recommendation! I will definitely give it a go!
  
  If you ever used notepad++ on windows, it's sort of like that. Uses the same engine, but has different features.
Geany is excellent. It's a lightweight programmer's editor with enough features and configurable hooks to provide the important parts of a full-blown IDE. It renders text clearly, never feels laggy, and doesn't get greedy with your RAM. I recommend it to people who can't stand the bloat that's often seen elsewhere these days, but would rather have a GUI than resort to vim.
A couple minor annoyances to me:
It doesn't yet support the Language Server Protocol, so any language that it doesn't understand will be left without syntax and context-sensitive features. (On the other hand, it does support a lot of languages.)
It inherits Scintilla's use of Gtk for its GUI, so it's an alien app on Qt-based desktops.
I use it anyway, because I find it easier / more comfortable to use than Kate.

6 comments