Search Is Over! – TextMate Equivalent and More for Linux & Windows
** UPDATE **
Check out the screencast here: http://www.rubyhead.com/2009/04/24/komodo-edit-textmate-alternative/
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Ok, I tried just about every editor in the world to get the same comfort and productivity I get from TextMate on my Mac. Although Geany comes close, I always went back to Vim. My Mac at work gave up on me and I am forced to work exclusively in Linux. So I went looking again.
I remember Becker telling me at the last RailsConf about his IDE, Komodo. So after trying out both Netbeans and Eclipse, I decided to give Komodo Edit a try. On a side note, it’s a real shame what Aptana did with RadRails.
I’m here to say that my search is OVER!
Komodo Edit is ActiveState’s stripped down editor that is the foundation of Komodo IDE. Even at its free price point, it does basically everything TextMate does. You can even change the scheme(theme) to make it visually identical to TextMate.
I just love how I can create a project and bring my Rails project as Live Folders, not adding any stupid files to the directory. This used to be one of my beef with Netbeans, the other being lack of word wrap.
With Komodo Edit, I now have IntelliSense back. It’s not as comprehensive as Microsoft Visual Studio, but it’s much more than acceptable. I never thought that I’d get it back when I left MS world.
There’s one giant catch and it’s a big one. Komodo IDE is ActiveState’s paid version with a bundle of extra features. Priced at $295, it’s really had for me to swallow. So what’s the problem? Once you start using Komodo Edit, you’ll start saying “gee, it would be great if this thing can…” and before you know it, IDE has it.
I almost bought the IDE version at least four times today. Since the company I work for won’t pay, I’ll have to pay this for myself. This is killing me right now. However, I’m very happy that I finally found the tool that I can work with.
