However, Linux-based systems are better in that they don’t treat you like an unusually stupid toddler (e.g. OS X is better than Linux-based OSs in that (in my experience) it tends to be far more reliable (i.e. P.S: And it really isn’t a black-and-white case of “one’s better”. The majority of them have absolutely nothing to do with Linus Torvalds. FreeBSD doesn’t use the Linux kernel, nor does NetBSD or OpenBSD. Similarly, the term ‘BSD Linux’ is nonsensical. If you’re running OS X, you should see a file called ‘mach_kernel’ (which, on my system, is about 15 megabytes). If you don’t believe me, open up bash (Terminal app), navigate to the root (cd /), and list the contents (ls). Linux is based on System V Unix, whereas the mach kernel/XNU kernel is based on BSD Unix. However, it isn’t Linux, and it has nothing to do with Linux. What I would love to find in a future TextWrangler version is a better dock icon, as the current one doesn’t really compete with other app icons on my dock. TextWrangler menus can also be fully customized (check the Preferences), as well as you can find lots of options for every little aspect that can make your life easier while working with source code files.Ĭlick here for a complete features list, or download TextWrangler here.

Some of the TextWrangler highlights are fast file loading, powerful search and replace functionality, a “drawer” for multiple files, FTP/SFTP support, included diff/merge tool, Terminal/scripts support, excellent encoding functionality and options. TextWrangler is a lot more advanced than Smultron, and in some areas actually even better than Notepad++. Therefore I decided to look for an alternative * free * text editor, and it was TextWrangler that has won me over. 100k lines), as well as in some cases difficulty detecting UTF-8 encoding properly. And although it’s fast enough, I have had some issues while loading large files (e.g. The problem is that Smultron is not being developed any more. Unfortunately Notepad++ has not been ported to Mac OS yet.įor quite a long time on Mac OS I have been running Smultron as the main text editor. While using Windows at the office, Notepad++ (free application) is my favorite text editor.

Features like code syntax highlighting, line numbers, extended search and replace, proper encoding support etc, are essential elements.

However power users, or software developers are always in need of a more advanced text editor. Casual users might be satisfied with plain text editors, such as TextEdit on Mac OS, or Notepad on Windows.

Get notepad++ for mac