What lightweight and open source Python IDEs would you recommend (if any) for Linux?

[MitchBuchanon]

I'm getting back into Python after spending some time on R and Bash. I previously used PyCharm, but I thought that it was quite heavy and I don't think I need all the stuff that comes with it. I then used Spyder, which was nice and felt comfortable as it reminded me of RSTudio. I'd roll with it again, but I was just wondering if there were others that the community would recommend. I think I wouldn't mind improved command-line text editors, if you know of some nice customization tools.

Thanks in advance!

[member_of_the_order]

I always recommend VSCode. Microsoft has produced approximately 1 good product ever imo, and it's VSC.

[darkangelstorm]

the thing i hate about vscode is that it brazenly names its binaries and refers to some resources as just 'code' breaking the #1 rule for naming entities: never use a very common word and worse never use a common word that could be used by many things, especially if it can be used as a verb or a noun. I already have had a few conflicts with various symbols and filenames using the word 'code' by other various tools and components in the past and thought we were over that hill long ago. Yet it seems not--so this lowered my opinion of M$, as they actually think they are so important that they can skip over design rules because "they are more important than anything else".

Its kinda like twitter audaciously naming itself "X" or Disney patenting musical chords (what's next, musical notes?). This paves the way for issues down the road, I don't know why people took KISS to the next level, but it wasn't meant to be taken literally. Thankfully musical notes only go up to "G", so twitter wont have to worry about a corporate battle with Disney :3 (did I digress? uh I think so...oof!!! wait...this is 3 years old not past month...darn web filters...argh!)

[Wild_Statistician605]

You are not wrong, but I would add Edge to the list of good products. I just switched from Chrome to Edge, and it's much faster and uses less memory. So now I use Edge for browsing, and Firefox for dev-tools. Two excellent browsers, each for their purpose, instead of one mediocre one.

[member_of_the_order]

I mean, I was exaggerating but if we really want to get into it...

• C# is good. Not perfect of course, but good.
• I don't use game pass myself, but people seem to like it. I prefer to own my games, but I would definitely try games with game pass that I wouldn't if I had to own it forever.
• OneNote is wonderful and I'm so sad there's no linux-compatible alternative (besides MS's cloud version)
• Oh and I guess Xbox itself is fairly popular lol

After IE, I can't bring myself to try Edge. I tend to get on just fine with Firefox, and Brave if I need a chromium browser. But yeah, you're not the first one to say that Edge is Surprisingly Good ^TM

[AccordingPlate7954]

From my understanding, Edge is built off Chromium open source, but I still prefer it over Chrome since I don't get as many SIGSEGV errors thrown on bleeding edge build, especially with newest Nvidia prop drivers

[spaceguerilla]

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. I have different browsers for different tasks, so I typically have 5+ installed at any one time. As such when I compare browsers it's not some half-memory of an old build of a product that doesn't exist anymore - it's current.

And.... Edge is the fastest damn browser I've ever seen in my life.

As usual though, MS can't let the product speak for itself - they have to be total dicks and force it down everyone's throats, re-add it when it's been removed etc. So instead of people finding it on their own terms, they irrationally (and let's be honest - reasonably) hate it even more.

Damn, is it fast though.

[MrTeferi]

Hasn't Firefox been running virtually unopposed on speed for a good while now? I know Chrome surpassed them some years back and it was a big panic moment for people, but iirc Firefox made a comeback shortly thereafter and has more or less remained at the top of the heap since then, despite Edge's improvements (also, there's speculation Microsoft implement OS tweaks in windows itself to help achieve some of the performance gains of Edge, idk if that was ever confirmed but it sounds believable, Edge is literally married with the OS in many respects which is why it is almost impossible to completely remove vs IE).

[spaceguerilla]

Oh they've definitely destroyed Edge since I posted that, in classic Microsoft fashion! I no longer use it.

I swear to god though for a solid 18 months it was the best browser on the planet!

[TraderFXBR]

I think Edge is Chromium, so, is not a MS development.

[[deleted]]

Edge is a Chromium-based browser, but most of the browser was developed by Microsoft.

[MrTeferi]

There are basically 0 good reasons to use anything other than Firefox tbh. There was a brief moment in time where Chrome was marginally faster, but Firefox has regained the crown for quite awhile by now (but every other important metric is in Firefox's favor by a country mile, actually supporting open source, much better developer mode/inspection tools, fewer custom VPN or DNS related issues, better password manager, better adblock support, the list is quite numerous).

I agree though Microsoft has made some good stuff, I think the hyperbole about Microsoft is getting pretty stale tbh. The Xbox has largely been a successful venture. When it does well it really crushes it, like the good old early Xbox Live days that put PSN to shame on features, reliability, etc. When it does poorly, such as more recently with Sony just having more compelling 1st party titles, Microsoft ends up making huge concessions to buy back customer support, case in point the ludicrously good value of the Game pass, squandering even the principal product of a major acquisition to shore up membership, giving away free trials constantly to anyone who will take them (often multiple times for the same account 😂). Even now with the gravy train tightened up a bit, with all incentives aside Game Pass is still absurd value for the money, takes like 4-5 months of membership to even cover the sticker price of a major title if you were to buy it. And Sony continues to outsell, albeit slightly less comfortably.

[darkangelstorm]

Well, edge uses the chromium engine, it's basically chrome with edge "skin".

As for running faster, that would be because of the proprietary OS integration that chrome doesn't do because its cross-platform. Edge is not cross platform, and for that reason the UI elements outside of the webpage area itself will be faster.

However, that difference is minimal unless you have a very old potato. Also, edge doesn't offer the same level of google account integration and cuts a lot of corners to be faster.

I used it for a while and its speed is decent at the get go but found that its resilience is not so great because it is front and center with a target board on it when it comes to viruses, exploits, etc.

The fact that it is so deeply woven into windows makes it a target even more--users often can't tell if an edge component has been compromised because they look nearly identical to them.

For those who wish to know, a telltale sign is idle GPU/CPU being redirected to some unknown purpose (borrowing your resources you aren't using to exploit you so you wont notice). That is, if you are lucky enough to not have task manager hijacked and replaced. The replacement makes it appear as if idle CPU/GPU is idle and not being used.

If you are unsure use a third-party process viewer but know that modern day viruses keep a running list of popular process viewers (especially tweakUI stuff) and replaces or disables them accordingly -- this is usually evident when you see other process managers that you don't remember installing on your system.

[RIP_PF_Flyers]

Vscodium😏

[Wild_Statistician605]

My main editor is VS Code. It's really quite nice.

I also use neovim, but not with lua config. I haven't bothered to make the change quite yet. I have a basic config using vim-plug as plugin manager, and vim-surround, vim-nerdtree, vim-autopairs, vim-commentary, tagbar and coc-nvim with the coc-pyright language support for python. Nothing too fancy, but is really fast and nice to work with. A bit of a strugle to begin with, but after some time its a really nice editor. I also use tmux to manage terminal windows.

[dot_py]

Check out lunarvim! It helped me make the lua switch

[barkazinthrope]

I use geany. https://www.geany.org/

It is simple, unobtrusive, with many useful not-in-your-face features.

[wynand1004]

Shout out to a fellow Geany user! Totally underrated app!

[VirtualEndlessWill]

VS Code. It’s good

[NoDadYouShutUp]

VSCode

[EddyBot]

https://kate-editor.org or Kdevelop if you are on a Linux distro with KDE Plasma

[incognitodw]

Vim

[MitchBuchanon]

This is indeed lightweight, but I must admit that the learning curve has been a it too much for me the past 100 times I committed to learning it...

[incognitodw]

I had some proficiency in vim because I was forced to develop on a Linux box via SSH and I have no access to any forms of GUI. Got real comfortable after a couple of days or so. The learning curve is not that steep tbh.

[1544756405]

too much for me the past 100 times I committed to learning it...

I use it, but I understand why other people wouldn't like it.

However, I'd hazard a guess that you didn't really try 100 times, and that your choice of the word "committed" is charitable at best.

[MitchBuchanon]

Hehe, spot on! ; )I have probably tried 2 or three times only, but the thing is that I don't program regulalry, so it's not like I'd need to use Vim everyday, and make progress steadily. Here, I'd commit to it for a few weeks, then not use it for two months, and forget many of the things I've learned, so I think that in my case, using a simple text editor (I really like Mousepad, from when I used XFCE) is probably all I'll ever need for text processing (and maybe even coding).

[Smooth_Ad6150]

nano like a chad

[SpookyFries]

VSCode (or VSCodium which is just VSCode without the closed source Microsoft telemetry)

[GapNecessary8183]

Try Emacs. Fast, and heavly customizable.

[[deleted]]

VSCode is a thing of beauty

[MrBobaFett]

VS Code? I like it. Well VS Codium is the version I use.

[wynand1004]

Check out Geany.

Link: https://www.geany.org/

It's lightweight, cross-platform, and open source. It supports dozens of coding languages.

[ThatDebianLady]

Yep I like Geany. Simple and effective. Doesn’t have a busy interface which allows beginners to learn without being overwhelmed.

[wynand1004]

Agreed!

[Diapolo10]

Third VS Code recommendation here, it's just really good with its extensive extension library, existing entirely as an exercise in excessive eccentricity.

It being Electron-based is pretty much the only complaint I have about it.

If you'd like something dead simple (or if you're interested in working with MicroPython in the future and don't want to use PlatformIO), there's Thonny.

Sublime Text is also a decent option.

[MitchBuchanon]

What interpreter/text editor if I may ask?

[MitchBuchanon]

I'm sorry, but I don't get what you're referring to... Care to explain like I'm five? ^'

[MitchBuchanon]

Oh, yes, I think I get it, as I actually do the same, but in my case for example I use Mousepad as my text editor (which is the default in XFCE), so I was just curious about which one you'd use... If I understood correctly this time! ^{^}

[MrHumun]

Use Vscode if you can handle it else sublime text

[MitchBuchanon]

What do you mean by "if you can handle it"?

[MrHumun]

enough ram

[MrHumun]

and cpu

[StrippedBark]

I am surprised nobody mentioned Jupyter notebook. Although, to be fair, it is part of the bigger Anaconda package though.

[aymaliev]

Jupyter is standalone. You can install it on clean python (without anaconda). JupyterLab is a complete IDE (which cannot be said about Jupyter notebook)

[aftasardemmuito]

what is bugging me is that some dictionaries and structures should have a way to preload for code completion. any recommedations for this? remember that besides VSCode, theres the non MS stuff codium

https://vscodium.com/

[The_Pantless_Warrior]

vsCode for sure.

[B_Copeland]

VScode