Time to try my newly-released text editor lol.
And around 20 years ago I did go all-in Linux.
They could’ve added this to wordpad if they didn’t kill it.
Fuck Ai. I just want Notepad to edit the most basic text. Why the fuck would I need fucking Ai bullshit in it? To rewrite what? INI game files? Hosts file?
Notepad++ is my text editor of choice as someone who just edits the occasional file. I’m not a programmer or anything, but it’s nice to have those autocomplete and syntax highlighting features for config files. Helps me keep track of stuff better when editing.
Sublime can do all of that as well, but it’s more performant, has better shortcut keys, and IMO it has much nicer navigation for larger files (gives you a sort of eagle-eye’s view of the entire document next to the scrollbar). That’s all very much a personal preference thing of course.
Hell yeah. I just wanted to add another option. I have no opinion regarding Sublime and choice is a good thing. There’s something for everyone.
Notepad is not free! Bah ha ha ha. Anyway, tons of options out there for those not to lazy to look.
[obligatory linux boast] I really prefer Kate to Notepad because KDE makes superior, non AI encrusted software that actually works for it’s users. And it’s FREE!
personally i find kate struggles with large files. KWrite is a better analog to notepad IMO
I like Kate as a program but man KDE need to change how some of their app names appear in Plasma.
A new user looking through their start menu and seeing “Kate” will have no idea it’s a text editor/notepad. The same is true for multiple other programs.
Okular, Dolphin, Cantata… ask someone who’s never tried Plasma before what those programs do and I’d wager you’d get an incorrect answer for each one.
What does “Excel” do? What does “Steam” do? What does “Balena” do? What does “Conky” do?
Programs that we think of as being part of the OS, such as the included text editor, is a very different thing to something like Steam, imo.
Steam isn’t preinstalled on your PC, it’s not a core part of your desktop OS. You download Steam yourself, so you’d only do it once you already know what it is.
Third party apps kinda need unique names and branding like that to distinguish themselves.
A newbie won’t know what “Kate” or “Okular” do. They might know what “Dolphin” does because it has a folder as the app icon (although users of screen readers won’t see that). They will probably know what “Notepad” or “Text Editor” does, though.
Kate isn’t a part of the OS, though… the text editor that is a part of the OS is called “vi”.
It literally is. It’s part of the KDE Plasma desktop. It comes preinstalled.
The Vim, nano command line text editors also being there doesn’t mean Kate isn’t an OS app.
Would you say the Dolphin file explorer isn’t an OS/system app on the basis that you can use commands like cd, mv, cp, pwd in terminal? Because I certainly wouldn’t.
It’s part of the KDE Plasma desktop.
KDE is not “The OS”.
Would you say the Dolphin file explorer isn’t an OS/system app
That is correct. Dolphin is not a part of “The OS”. Case in point, you can install Kate, and Dolphin, on FreeBSD. And on Windows.
Having vi is a part of the POSIX specification, therefore, it is a part of the OS.
You’re sounding like one of those people that says “ummm ackshully it’s GNU + Linux, not Linux”
Yes, you can have a desktop without a desktop environment. Well done. Nobody does that in the desktop space. Kate is an OS program.
If you install a distro with KDE, you will have Kate. It’s an OS program.
Case in point, you can install Kate, and Dolphin, on FreeBSD. And on Windows.
Pahahaha, that’s not what defines whether a program is an OS one or not. You can run paint on Linux if you wanted to. Based on your definition, Paint therefore isn’t part of the Windows app suite.
Let’s get back on topic - do you think a normal user will hear “Kate” and think “ah, that must be the text editor!”, do you think they’ll hear “Dolphin” and think “ah, that must be a file manager of some kind!”?
There is actually an option to do that iirc. You can have it show entry descriptions.
Indeed. That’s what I do on my Plasma system, it’s a good option.
But a new user or someone who isn’t technical won’t see that, they don’t go digging through settings in each app, they just use the defaults.
I guess a solid compromise would be to enable this by default, and anybody who doesn’t like that short descriptor can disable it.
But IMO nothing will beat the no-nonsense straightforwardness of calling OS apps immediately intuitive names. This is something I believe Gnome gets right. Go onto their GitHub and their file manager is called Nautilus, but on your system it will default to being called “Files”, because they know everyone will understand what “Files” is but a lot of people would ask “Wtf is Nautilus??”, same goes for other apps, e.g. “Loupe” appearing as “Image Viewer”.
Even though it’s typically associated with KDE and Linux, it’s also available on Windows. Good for people who haven’t made up their mind yet. It’s a great text editor with a feature-set similar to other advanced notepads.
I’ll be real though, if I hadn’t jumped ship 3 years ago, I’d be cutting my losses with Windows here.
I love Kate.
thanks!
♥️♥️♥️
Me too! So much so that I have sworn to name my first secretary Kate.
Notepad++ is way better anyway
I use Vim, actually
There always has to be one…
Same.
Just use
edif you’re feeling so fancy
!linux@programming.dev could use more folks!
So… who wants to bet that the new version of Notepad is not constantly scraping anything you type into it and feeding it into the AI, regardless of whether you’re paying for this feature or not?
Sublime text ftw
deleted by creator
Notepad++ on windows is kind of the GOAT IMO.
The search and replace UX is 10 years behind. The sole reason I use sublime text instead
I’m a happy sublime user myself but the search UI is one thing I particularly don’t like about it.
Npp has normal, with special characters and regex, does sublime has something better there?
They said UI, so I don’t think they meant features. But honestly I’ve never been unhappy with their UI, aside from one day with multiple replaces across a few files where the autofill from clipboard kept deleting the expression I wanted to be in there as I navigated through what I needed to do.
But that was fine, anyway, it got through it and I’m just happy with the “apply to all open documents” setting. Saved me at least an hour.
They achtually said UX which is User Experience.
The regex engine was not full featured last time I tried. Done know which implementation they use, but it was lacking basic features like end of line matching (if I remember correctly).
Tbf, they already control the os itself. They already have access to all of the keystrokes. Implementing it just in notepad feels like a rube goldbergy way of scraping user data.
Case in point: Windows 11 “Light” (LTSC) from Microsoft has the classic and advertisement-free version of Notepad.
It’s so stupid that they’re making these additions to notepad. There is a need to have a basic text editor on an OS that isn’t going to try to “help” by giving recommendations, automatically backs up files or whatever other shit they’re trying to jam into it.
They had wordpad and if they wanted to add additional features into that, that’s completely fine. There are use cases for something that does a bit more than a simple text editor like notepad can do.
My guess is that they tracked that people used notepad more often than wordpad so they removed wordpad. Then started making notepad more like wordpad without considering why people used notepad more frequently.
Telemetry was a mistake
It is batshit crazy. Notepad was never meant to be what they are making it into. Not even WordPad should have AI nonsense. It’s just not for that. It would be like adding advanced spreadsheet functionality to Microsoft Word. It’s not what that’s for, you have Excel for that.
Sure but with Wordpad I wouldn’t much care if they spam it up with this kind of crap. It’s something that doesn’t have much use now, because there’s notepad for basic text files and Word or Libre Office for actual word processing. So if someone wanted something to type up some notes that get automatic backups, and have AI recommendations (not that it would be me, but who knows?) just put it on there so we still have a simple text editor that’s installed by default.
If they’re going to enshittify something at least don’t enshittify the basic tools of the OS.
lol fuck that
This is misinformation. They added the login requirement for their Generative AI and the actual notepad doesn’t require a login. But I guess we’re ragebaiting today.
I turned off that AI stuff as soon as I saw it. Click the gear icon in Notepad in the upper right to open settings and turn it off.
Oh, one of the first things I did was group policy edit anything to do with tracking, ads, or AI.
Yeah. Like, I get AI can be useful, but it’s fucking everywhere! Even a god damn fridge got AI! And I hate it to be so forced on me, like, I just wanna write text or code without Copilot annoying me all of the time.
Is the Genevieve AI enabled by default?
After opening the notepad app does it ask you for that login?
Is your access to notepad restricted by the login?
No, only in so far as the button to use it existing passively
No
And no
“But it turns out that, while this screenshot is indeed real, those eagle-eyed enough should already be able to tell that something isn’t quite lining up here. In fact, nearly any Windows 11 user could open up the fully updated Notepad without getting this pop-up at all, even if they aren’t already signed into a Microsoft account. So, what’s the deal here?”
“The key is in the exact wording, identifiable within the first sentence: “Sign in with your Microsoft account to use Rewrite and its features in Notepad.” This is a prompt that exists, yes, but one that’s exclusive to Copilot+ PCs and explicitly requires the user to trigger it by clicking the Rewrite button, as confirmed by our own testing.”
Please read the article. No. My access to notepad is not restricted. I also don’t run any copilot features of any kind on windows 11. Yes, I believe Generative AI Copilot is enabled by default, but in this case the only time you get prompted to login is when you use a feature in notepad that directly needs copilot in order to work and you the user have to select that feature. Meaning you can use notepad without it entirely and never even see this prompt at all.
Microsoft is a tech giant with all the bad crap that implies. They do enough terrible things that we don’t need to lie to make them look bad.
Upvoted for visibility.
I recommend Notepad++.
I use Kate on the windows work pc
I use Kate on the windows work pc
I love Kate, but I’ve only been using it since last August. Been using npp for a decade before that, even as my IDE, and I felt like it was stronger than Kate.
Kate has a lot of features that are not well documented or that you have to tape together to make something functional, while npp just works out of the box or with one of its many addons. Additionally the Kate documentation website is atrocious, lacking even basic search functionality. I had to join their IRC channel to get help figuring out something (path to some obscure config file that the latest version actually reads from), and while they were most helpful, I really shouldn’t have had to go through all that trouble.
Maybe my approach to trying to solve a problem was wrong, coming from Windows + npp.
Maybe I’ll give npp a test again. But I’ve been using kate because I’ve been using it on my linux system and found out I can install it at work on windows as well
Having this LLM bullshit in Notepad should be the real news
Yeah. This is why I’ve disabled copilot and Gemini on my devices altogether. It’s not worth it to have this nonsense filling up everything you use or rely on on a daily basis.
They really do seem to be on a mission to cram it into everything
Can’t wait to see in 5 years while all of the LLM nonsense quietly gets shuffled further and further to the back until it’s gone like Cortana or Paint3D
Meanwhile has anyone noticed Microsoft has unhidden some genuinely useful older menus like Control Panel? Earlier in the windows 10 lifespan you couldn’t search for control panel and had to instead use constantly changing shortcuts and tooltips to gain access to it, but now you can just search for Control Panel and pull it right up. I’m not thrilled that I have to dig for the network adapter properties still but I’ll take the improvements I get
I hate
the information superhighwaythe world wide webthe blogospheresocial mediaweb2.0mobilethe cloudIOTblockchainar/vrgenerative AI
I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple does something like this too at some point in the future
