Sublime Text is a really powerful and elegant text editor, used by most developers around the world (compared to Notepad++, which I used previously to edit my HTML and text files). The ability to install custom packages and themes makes it even more powerful for casual and professional developers out there.
The problem is, Sublime Text is not exactly free. Though you can pretty much run it on “free trial forever”, it’s illegal. You are supposed to pay the license (USD 70) for continued use, but you can close the pop-up reminder and ignore it.
If your conscience still somewhat reminds you of honesty, you should already be using it legally. If you don’t have $70 to spare, thankfully, there is now a free alternative.
The guys over at GitHub has just released Atom 1.0 open source text editor, that is free to use. With over 2,090 packages and 660 themes to search and install as add-ons, Atom is no small fry.
Like Sublime Text, there are many powerful packages like auto completion of codes, syntax for your favorite programs, vim mode, integration to git version controlling system, minimap of your current opened file/code, and tons more. It looks like Atom is also loved by the developers community and we’ll definitely see it to be supported more with awesome packages and themes.
Even if you are not a developer, Atom is a great text editor replacement for Notepad as it’s prettier, has tabs for opening and switching to different files quickly, and support to read really long texts quickly.
Atom can be installed on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. If you are looking for a free alternative to Sublime Text (or Notepad, Notepad++) that is still powerful, pretty, and supported by the community for months to come, have a look at Atom.
