We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

A little break in the gaming news for a moment to mention that Zed, a "high-performance, multiplayer code editor from the creators of Atom and Tree-sitter", now has a Linux version available.

Something many have been wanting, because of how popular it is. Previously only officially available for macOS, the developers are not yet even providing official builds for Windows (but it can be built from source).

Announced via their blog in the "Linux when? Linux now." post, it included a nice thank you note about how vital the community has been in pushing the rapid development of the Linux build.

It has some of the fanciest sounding features I've ever read for a code editor. Built like a video game as they said: "Zed’s breakthrough performance starts with our GPUI framework, a new way to build 2D user interfaces. GPUI rasterizes the entire window on the GPU, just like a 3D video game. The result? Fast, reliable, and smooth delivery of pixels on every frame.".

Not just that, it's built for collaboration too with a virtual office system with different channels, shared documents for notes, audio and text-based chat and so on. So, it sounds like an open-source Discord for programmers in a way.

See more on the official website.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
14 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly.
See more from me
29 comments
Page: «2/3»
  Go to:

ShadMessa Jul 11
Multiplayer what's a multiplayer code editor ???
TheSHEEEP Jul 11
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: dmoonfireAs opposed to being self-hosted network services first and happen to have an instance for those who don't want to manage a hosted ve4aion themselves.
That's still paid-for, you just pay someone else for the hosting, not the editor dev.

Either way, I agree it would be nice if they gave you tools for self-hosting.

Quoting: ShadMessaMultiplayer what's a multiplayer code editor ???
Multiple people editing a file at the same time while seeing what the others are doing.

It's been a bit of a fad recently. You know, the kind of thing executives get super giddy about, but most actual developers roll their eyes when they aren't looking ;)

There are of some cases where it can be useful (say debugging an especially nasty bug or ironing out interfaces, etc.).
And it is nice to not have to deal with merge issues in case two people edited the same file at the same time.
But overall I'd say it's a nice little thing, but has the distinct taste of a solution looking for a problem. I've been doing this coding thing for 15+ years and don't think I ever thought "boy, I wish someone else could also edit this file right now".

Plus who the hell wants to have someone else (potentially) looking over their shoulder all the time while coding?


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 11 July 2024 at 5:20 pm UTC
wvstolzing Jul 11
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: dmoonfireAs opposed to being self-hosted network services first and happen to have an instance for those who don't want to manage a hosted ve4aion themselves.
That's still paid-for, you just pay someone else for the hosting, not the editor dev.

Quoting: ShadMessaMultiplayer what's a multiplayer code editor ???
Multiple people editing a file at the same time while seeing what the others are doing.

It's been a bit of a fad recently. You know, the kind of thing executives get super giddy about, but most actual developers roll their eyes when they aren't looking ;)

There are of some cases where it can be useful (say debugging an especially nasty bug or ironing out interfaces, etc.).
And it is nice to not have to deal with merge issues in case two people edited the same file at the same time.
But overall I'd say it's a nice little thing, but has the distinct taste of a solution looking for a problem. I've been doing this coding thing for 15+ years and don't think I ever thought "boy, I wish someone else could also edit this file right now".

Plus who the hell wants to have someone else (potentially) looking over their shoulder all the time while coding?

There's this new latex alternative markup language for scientific papers: https://typst.app/ -- it also comes with a collaborative web app, etc. The demo video on the webpage is absolutely hilarious IMHO. It supposedly shows a bunch of people 'collaborating' on a document. Though all I see is people editing out their peer's words in real time in a way that resembles the 'DUCK SEASON / RABBIT SEASON' bit from Bugs Bunny.
"Multiplayer" and "code editor" are two terms I admittedly would not have associated on my own, as a programmer for over a decade. Not saying it can't work, and I'd even be interested in trying it, but:

Quoting: akselmoEdit: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/12589 oh no
Oh, yikes. That's just asking for a supply chain attack.


Quoting: wvstolzingThere's this new latex alternative markup language for scientific papers: https://typst.app/ -- it also comes with a collaborative web app, etc. The demo video on the webpage is absolutely hilarious IMHO. It supposedly shows a bunch of people 'collaborating' on a document. Though all I see is people editing out their peer's words in real time in a way that resembles the 'DUCK SEASON / RABBIT SEASON' bit from Bugs Bunny.
I keep meaning to check out Typst and haven't gotten around to it. Will be interesting to see how well it can actually replace LaTeX. There's a similar platform called Overleaf that allows collaboration on LaTeX documents which I used to write my thesis. The issue with such collaborative editing, in my experience, is that for any piece of writing there's always one person who does at least 90% of the work of actually getting words out, and the collaboration is limited to every other co-author doing minor edits or making suggestions. It's hard for me to imagine a scenario where multiple people get together to actually write something at the same time, other than, like, a brainstorming session.
Quoting: dmoonfire[...] Atom [...] contributed a decent amount of code. When Microsoft canned it, it was heartbreaking because all my work was basically just canned.

Sorry for your loss, I remember being extremely unpopular 5 or 10 years ago warning everyone during the "Microsoft <3 Linux" phase, that based on decades of behavior [ Eg: SCO vs Novell Linux lawsuit funded by Microsoft ], Microsoft was still the same.

It hurts to find out first hand. The buying of Github, I feel bad for MineCraft fans. It was already bad enough Microsoft bought out Halo when it was already a Mac-first game around Y2K.

Sucks. But I'm glad people see it now and are not going to be surprised when they try to pull leverage in The Linux Foundation and all their bureaucracies to get the insider scoop and hurt us more.

Hell they ripped off KDE Plasma theme, Workspaces, it'll be funny to see what they rip of next -- Scrolling Tiling Window Management? Thieves.

Peak Microsoft.
To go along with @akselmo and @wvstolzing -- my experience was poor too.

I can't even launch it on Arch Linux & Sway.

I have 0 interest in "AI" in my editor -- that's just a buzz word like "The Cloud" where it means everything will be enshitified.

"Multiplayer"? What is "Multiplayer"? Like "Multi-user" -- it feels juvenile. old_man_yelling_at_clouds.jpg

To their credit I am very interested in that it is made in Rust.

Quoting: akselmoYou can luckily toggle off the AI bullshit from the settings but it being plastered everywhere really tells me who the audience is, and I don't think it's me. Also they seemed to equate Git with Github, because only Github services were supported.

Hit that nail on the head. I don't think the audience is me either -- I'm not a l33t teen coder looking to show off -- but to their credit maybe that is the strategic market to appeal to who knows SMS.

The GitHub = Git thing is absolutely daft, tonedeaf and ludicrous.

Quoting: akselmoOn positive side though, it was very easy to get going with it and the config, while being editing json files (why??), was still alright experience.

I'm cool with the JSON thing, probably because I haven't actually seen another configuration format that I feel is better than JSON is easy to parse with jq in scripts. I feel like JSON is Gen 2 of configuration formatting, and I can't wait to se what Gen 3 is. YAML?

Quoting: akselmoEdit: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/12589 oh no

Zed downloads NodeJS binary and npm packages from Internet without user’s consent #12589

LMAO. NGL that's pretty funny. What a mess.

I know this is a little judgemental and may be a bit premature as it will take time to see -- but they are reminding me of Manjaro a bit.

This bug precisely underscores why a lot of folk like to use old tried and true things instead of "The New Shiny".

Me personally, I don't have the time I used to have to delve into new software daily. The $99 I paid for Sublime Text already paid off in multiples due to time saved.

Atom Editor used to open waaaaayyyy to slowwww. Sublime was faster, and I could easily open 100 - 1,000 files or even a PHP Project with 10k files when I needed to a recursive Find & Replace.

I am willing to give Zed some slack, some good will (for now), while they get it together because they are new and interesting, but so far it seems like they are off to a cold start.

I will credit them with any innovations they coin if other editors copy them too. We'll see -- hopefully they are not full Manjaro.
ShadMessa Jul 11
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: ShadMessaMultiplayer what's a multiplayer code editor ???
Multiple people editing a file at the same time while seeing what the others are doing.

It's been a bit of a fad recently. You know, the kind of thing executives get super giddy about, but most actual developers roll their eyes when they aren't looking ;)

There are of some cases where it can be useful (say debugging an especially nasty bug or ironing out interfaces, etc.).
And it is nice to not have to deal with merge issues in case two people edited the same file at the same time.
But overall I'd say it's a nice little thing, but has the distinct taste of a solution looking for a problem. I've been doing this coding thing for 15+ years and don't think I ever thought "boy, I wish someone else could also edit this file right now".

Plus who the hell wants to have someone else (potentially) looking over their shoulder all the time while coding?

I would agree that it sounds good on paper, if git + a simple discord call wasn't a thing.


Last edited by ShadMessa on 11 July 2024 at 8:25 pm UTC
ShadMessa Jul 11
Quoting: wvstolzing
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: dmoonfireAs opposed to being self-hosted network services first and happen to have an instance for those who don't want to manage a hosted ve4aion themselves.
That's still paid-for, you just pay someone else for the hosting, not the editor dev.

Quoting: ShadMessaMultiplayer what's a multiplayer code editor ???
Multiple people editing a file at the same time while seeing what the others are doing.

It's been a bit of a fad recently. You know, the kind of thing executives get super giddy about, but most actual developers roll their eyes when they aren't looking ;)

There are of some cases where it can be useful (say debugging an especially nasty bug or ironing out interfaces, etc.).
And it is nice to not have to deal with merge issues in case two people edited the same file at the same time.
But overall I'd say it's a nice little thing, but has the distinct taste of a solution looking for a problem. I've been doing this coding thing for 15+ years and don't think I ever thought "boy, I wish someone else could also edit this file right now".

Plus who the hell wants to have someone else (potentially) looking over their shoulder all the time while coding?

There's this new latex alternative markup language for scientific papers: https://typst.app/ -- it also comes with a collaborative web app, etc. The demo video on the webpage is absolutely hilarious IMHO. It supposedly shows a bunch of people 'collaborating' on a document. Though all I see is people editing out their peer's words in real time in a way that resembles the 'DUCK SEASON / RABBIT SEASON' bit from Bugs Bunny.

No mathematician will EVER use a "multiplayer" editor for their papers. I know people who don't even use a connected device.
wvstolzing Jul 11
Quoting: ShadMessa
Quoting: wvstolzing
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: dmoonfireAs opposed to being self-hosted network services first and happen to have an instance for those who don't want to manage a hosted ve4aion themselves.
That's still paid-for, you just pay someone else for the hosting, not the editor dev.

Quoting: ShadMessaMultiplayer what's a multiplayer code editor ???
Multiple people editing a file at the same time while seeing what the others are doing.

It's been a bit of a fad recently. You know, the kind of thing executives get super giddy about, but most actual developers roll their eyes when they aren't looking ;)

There are of some cases where it can be useful (say debugging an especially nasty bug or ironing out interfaces, etc.).
And it is nice to not have to deal with merge issues in case two people edited the same file at the same time.
But overall I'd say it's a nice little thing, but has the distinct taste of a solution looking for a problem. I've been doing this coding thing for 15+ years and don't think I ever thought "boy, I wish someone else could also edit this file right now".

Plus who the hell wants to have someone else (potentially) looking over their shoulder all the time while coding?

There's this new latex alternative markup language for scientific papers: https://typst.app/ -- it also comes with a collaborative web app, etc. The demo video on the webpage is absolutely hilarious IMHO. It supposedly shows a bunch of people 'collaborating' on a document. Though all I see is people editing out their peer's words in real time in a way that resembles the 'DUCK SEASON / RABBIT SEASON' bit from Bugs Bunny.

No mathematician will EVER use a "multiplayer" editor for their papers. I know people who don't even use a connected device.

Right, just as course assistants & professors are loath to use the course management software they sell universities, and supposedly 'upgrade' year after year with pointless features. When I was a course assistant we only ever used it to enter grades at the end of the term -- otherwise email, & the 'track changes' feature on the word processor sufficed perfectly well for all our needs.
Guppy Jul 12
It seems like an interesting editor until you start looking into it;
- AI everywhere
- Remote development runs through their servers instead of doing something sensible like using a direct ssh connection between client and host

i mean vscode is also getting infected with AI everywhere, but atleast remote dev doesn't run though a 3rd party server (yet)
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
Login / Register


Or login with...
Sign in with Steam Sign in with Google
Social logins require cookies to stay logged in.