{"slug": "kate", "name": "Kate", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 7, "warners": 0, "score": 4.408, "rising": 0.02, "first": "2025-11-30", "latest": "2026-09-02", "why": "stumbled on KDE/kate. It's been a perfect substitute.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 4, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "stumbled on KDE/kate. It's been a perfect substitute.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/kde/kate", "official_url": "https://kate-editor.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Kate"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 792517953, "item_id": 49532372, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49532372", "by": "stillpointlab", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like Kate, but it has way too many option I will never use", "excerpt": "I was planning to. It is 100% vibe coded, the first project I did that way. I'm one of those who've been reading all the code in my major projects. But when I got frustrated with editors and off-handed mentioned to Fable something like \"I like Kate, but it has way too many option I will never use\" it told me that the core part could be wrapped pretty easily (like 50 lines of C++). So I just said \"do it\" and have been", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor"}, {"id": 773743105, "item_id": 48358944, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48358944", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-06-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Kate (my main programming editor, coupled with clangd for C/C++ programming)", "excerpt": "I don't really use Plasma itself (and soon i wont even be able to if the rumors of them dropping X11 support are to be believed) but i do use various KDE apps, like Krita (which i use for most painting stuff), Kate (my main programming editor, coupled with clangd for C/C++ programming), KolourPaint, Spectacle, Ghostwriter, etc and in general i find KDE/Qt apps to be more to my liking in their UX than anything based o", "context": "", "use_case": "C/C++ programming", "switched_from": "", "story": "KDE at 30"}, {"id": 767199456, "item_id": 47949966, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47949966", "by": "vunderba", "date": "2026-04-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "stumbled on KDE/kate. It's been a perfect substitute.", "excerpt": "I finally moved off Sublime a few months ago because I wanted something open source and stumbled on KDE/kate. It's been a perfect substitute. https://github.com/kde/kate", "context": "wanted something open source", "use_case": "open source text editor", "switched_from": "Sublime Text", "story": "Zed is 1.0"}, {"id": 737614421, "item_id": 46100901, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100901", "by": "auxym", "date": "2025-11-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use many of their apps too, such as Kate.", "excerpt": "Scoop (https://scoop.sh/), a package manager for windows that is essential to make Windows usable for me. Sourcegit is my new favorite git client. Git in general, of course. Linux and also the people behind RT_PREEMPT, I am excited to see it merged into mainline this year. KDE has been my favorite DE for years and I use many of their apps too, such as Kate. Thanks to everyone contributing to the KDE project. The enti", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What open source projects are you grateful for?"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "stillpointlab", "context": "Fedora user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49532243", "date": "2026-09-02"}, {"by": "vunderba", "context": "wanted something open source", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47949966", "date": "2026-04-29"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["text editing", "text editor", "code editing", "editing synced text notes on laptop", "c/c++ programming", "open source text editor"], "compared": [{"slug": "visual-studio-code", "name": "Visual Studio Code", "co": 2, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "sublime-text", "name": "Sublime Text", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "zim-wiki", "name": "Zim Wiki", "co": 1, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "vim", "name": "Vim", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "claude-fable", "name": "Claude Fable", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "github-copilot", "name": "GitHub Copilot", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49524863", "title": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49374797", "title": "Bun 1.4", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49084324", "title": "Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48357355", "title": "KDE at 30", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47949027", "title": "Zed is 1.0", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47923357", "title": "GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 792517953, "item_id": 49532372, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49532372", "by": "stillpointlab", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like Kate, but it has way too many option I will never use", "excerpt": "I was planning to. It is 100% vibe coded, the first project I did that way. I'm one of those who've been reading all the code in my major projects. But when I got frustrated with editors and off-handed mentioned to Fable something like \"I like Kate, but it has way too many option I will never use\" it told me that the core part could be wrapped pretty easily (like 50 lines of C++). So I just said \"do it\" and have been", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor"}, {"id": 792515890, "item_id": 49532243, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49532243", "by": "stillpointlab", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "even Kate, which was great, had too much going on", "excerpt": "I literally just got Fable to write me a text editor. Well, I'll be honest, I got it to wrap the KDE KTextEditor library which is like 90% of a text editor. I had been using Kate which was what an LLM suggested was the closest to something like Sublime Text on Fedora. But even Kate, which was great, had too much going on. So I asked Fable to take the text editor part (KTextEditor) and wrap it using Rust with an LSP s", "context": "Fedora user", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "Kate", "story": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor"}, {"id": 790285170, "item_id": 49392823, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49392823", "by": "solid_fuel", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "they have switched to Kate or Vim", "excerpt": "> Even if they're producing code by hand, surely they have LLM helpers by now. Nah. Most of my coworkers got so annoyed by VS Code injecting copilot and other \"helpers\" that they have switched to Kate or Vim. There are still a lot of places that value engineering excellence, and plenty of people who value doing the actual work and knowing that it is correct, instead of delegating to an LLM and hoping.", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "VS Code", "story": "Bun 1.4"}, {"id": 787571618, "item_id": 49223226, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223226", "by": "mxuribe", "date": "2026-08-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Kate text editor on laptop", "excerpt": "I remember zim wiki! I used to love it! I think as a desktop app (if you will), it does a really great job! In my case, i eventually started moving away from work flows that were desktop-driven-only, hence felt zimi wiki lacked mobile support...so stopped using it about 8 or so years ago. Then i started to realize that a bunch of basic text files synced across my devices in the simplest fashion, and using whatever fa", "context": "", "use_case": "editing synced text notes on laptop", "switched_from": "Zim Wiki", "story": "Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management"}, {"id": 773743105, "item_id": 48358944, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48358944", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-06-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Kate (my main programming editor, coupled with clangd for C/C++ programming)", "excerpt": "I don't really use Plasma itself (and soon i wont even be able to if the rumors of them dropping X11 support are to be believed) but i do use various KDE apps, like Krita (which i use for most painting stuff), Kate (my main programming editor, coupled with clangd for C/C++ programming), KolourPaint, Spectacle, Ghostwriter, etc and in general i find KDE/Qt apps to be more to my liking in their UX than anything based o", "context": "", "use_case": "C/C++ programming", "switched_from": "", "story": "KDE at 30"}, {"id": 767199456, "item_id": 47949966, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47949966", "by": "vunderba", "date": "2026-04-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "stumbled on KDE/kate. It's been a perfect substitute.", "excerpt": "I finally moved off Sublime a few months ago because I wanted something open source and stumbled on KDE/kate. It's been a perfect substitute. https://github.com/kde/kate", "context": "wanted something open source", "use_case": "open source text editor", "switched_from": "Sublime Text", "story": "Zed is 1.0"}, {"id": 766834850, "item_id": 47927178, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47927178", "by": "heikkilevanto", "date": "2026-04-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use a simple editor (KDE's Kate)", "excerpt": "I started to use github copilot with vscode, but have never been too happy about the system. Over the months I gravitated to much more agentic workstyle, hardly ever editing much code by hand. The vscode IDE was getting more in the way. I had already started to look at OpenCode, and when I found it has a web interface, I was happy to switch over. I use a simple editor (KDE's Kate), or just less to skim through the co", "context": "", "use_case": "skimming code", "switched_from": "VS Code", "story": "GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing"}, {"id": 737614421, "item_id": 46100901, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100901", "by": "auxym", "date": "2025-11-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use many of their apps too, such as Kate.", "excerpt": "Scoop (https://scoop.sh/), a package manager for windows that is essential to make Windows usable for me. Sourcegit is my new favorite git client. Git in general, of course. Linux and also the people behind RT_PREEMPT, I am excited to see it merged into mainline this year. KDE has been my favorite DE for years and I use many of their apps too, such as Kate. Thanks to everyone contributing to the KDE project. The enti", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What open source projects are you grateful for?"}]}