I liked notepad for it’s simplicity.
Even notepad++ was way more complex than notepad ever was.
It literally just used ASCII (or similar) characters to a file. You can’t open anything other than text on it, it won’t allow you to attach pictures, graphs, videos or even links. You need to type out the damned URL in its entirety.
N++ is great for what it is, but notepad, aside from it’s simplicity, was also great because it was everywhere.
Windows 11 started the down fall of my favorite simple text editor when they introduced… tabs.
I hate that. I close notepad, and then open it again and… Why is all this shit still here!!!
Get fucked Microsoft.
People complain that Linux is inconvenient but then prostrate themselves upon the broken, buggy, ad-infested spyware that is Windows. Doesn’t seem very convenient to me. This person thought that their Notepad data was private before Copilot? Ha!
All of the Copilot features in Notepad require manual interaction. When you click the button, there’s a menu with options like “Rewrite”, “Summarize”, “Make shorter”, “Make longer”, etc., which either operate on the current selection or the entire document. How exactly that’s implemented is obviously speculation, but most likely it will only send your data to Microsoft when you actually activate one of these functions. In fact, none of them even work without an active Copilot Plus subscription (I’ve tried). There is no free tier here, if try to use any of these features without a subscription, you’ll just get prompted to sign up for one.
Also, the entire thing can be easily turned off from the settings panel.
Sadly most people grow up using and are tought Windows from the first time they touch a computer so its quirks and workarounds of bugs are engrained in the users mind.
Uprooting their entire (current) knowlegebase is inconvenient… but it’s still for the greater good of their privacy and in my opinion effectiveness of whatever they do.
The fundamental roadblock here is: people are generally done with ‘learning’ when they become adult. Not learning computers or software, or anything else in particular. Just learning. There seems to be a somewhat common idea that ‘education’ and ‘learning’ is for children, and as an adult, you should have better things to do. Sadly, we can see all around where such an idea leads us.
Oh wow, I have never heard of such a thing. I hope those people are okay. I know if I stopped learning things i’d probably die from boredom, because all you can do at that point is repeat yourself.
That view definitely needs to change for the people who hold it.
IMO usually a lot easier than learning Windows too. But I can understand them not knowing that if they’ve never tried. All they know about Linux is that it’s nerdy and technical.
My findings: Microsoft keeps changing Windows. You have to keep learning because oh the Start menu looks and works different for the 7th time in my life. All the settings menus are different. Again. Right clicking on this doesn’t work now. I stopped using Windows 10 years ago and I don’t know how it even works anymore. Learning Linux did not feel much different from being presented with Windows 8.1. And Linux doesn’t shift out from under you as fast as Windows does.
“convenient” ≠ “best option” or even “easiest option”.
Linux is inconvenient because they would have to go out of their way to switch to it. Windows is convenient because it’s right there and ready to go on essentially any computer.
And people dont care about “best” or “easiest” options because to most people a computer is just a means to an end.
Notepad had one job. Operate on a damn text file. Operate on the damn text files I choose.
I knew it was going down the drain when I reopened Notepad and it opened the files that were previously open. No. Don’t do that. That’s overly helpful. You were only supposed to operate on the damn files I chose. These files I’m about to work with aren’t necessarily the files I previously worked on. If I want this functionality I might as well open it in vscode.
I’m, like, screw it, might as well keep Emacs running if I need random temporary text editing.
I hate it when my technology tries to be smart. Be predictable, you piece of junk. I dont need my laptop to sleep when I shut the lid because all that foes is stop it from shutting down. And opening it doesnt need to turn it on ffs. I blame company policy.
I miss when things were simple, predictable, and you could simply work around them.
FYI, you can turn this feature off. Click on the gear icon, scroll all the way down, there’s a new section called “AI features”, which has a toggle switch to disable Copilot. Once you flip it to off, Notepad looks and behaves precisely as it did in the past.
EDIT: also, you need to be logged into a Microsoft account and have an active Copilot Plus subscription for any of the AI features to even work. If you try to use them without a subscription, you just get prompted to sign up for one.
VSCode: We already have an IDE.
Windows: But what about second IDE?
Personally I find that feature (including tabs in general) very helpful and is something i’d expect from a text editor in the 20th century.
Just my opinion. To each their own, but just wanted to share that it might also be many others’ opinion too.
I think I’d be able to agree with you if new notepad didn’t take a noticeable time to load. It used to be the 2nd fastest thing I could launch, after the Run dialog itself.
Gotta agree here with you. Yeah theoretically maybe someone really just needs a text editor with absolutely no additional convenient features (maybe the older versions of Notepad allowing different fonts and word wrap was too much for someone as well?). But this is such an objective improvement in 95% of usecases it’s kind of ridiculous to complain about it.
In the 20th century I’d expect something that can open, edit and save plaintext files. But we’re 1/4th of the way into the 21st century.
I find I have two uses for a plaintext editor: plaintext, and computer script. I don’t like using rich text editors like Word for writing notes and such because the formatting options just get in the way; plaintext lets me “just write.” And for this, there’s very little automation that will be helpful.
In the Linux ecosystem, plaintext editors are all trying so hard to be IDEs. They’ll close parentheses or quotes or whatever for you, and if you’re doing something like 15" to mean fifteen inches you’ll get two, you’ll hit backspace and it’ll take both away…it doesn’t help.
If I’m programming anything of any size I’m going to open an IDE, probably because I’m working within some ecosystem. If I’m writing a couple lines of Bash I’ll probably use Vim. So I’d rather tune my plaintext editor to write actual .txt files, as prose.
3rd use perhaps being syntax recognition?
That would fall under “computer script.”
I am either:
- Writing in plain human English, in which case I need a PLAIN TEXT editor. Maybe I want spell check and stuff like that in it.
- Writing computer code, for which I’ll use a code editor or IDE. Maybe I want syntax highlighting and bracket closing and auto indent here.
I like how the tabs save when I close notepad. Its super helpful when I just need to jot down some quick notes or a serial number or something.
And I’m really dumb so I often close my notepad window before I’m done and this feature has saved me numerous times.
I don’t have copilot in my notepad tho. Which is good.
The best part is that it even retains unsaved documents (and unsaved changes in existing ones), which makes it very feasible to use Notepad as sort of an extended clipboard. Surprisingly good thinking for Microsoft.
Meh, sounds like a worse version of notepad++, which has been very popular and reliable since the early 21st century.
If they make notepad more bloated than notepad++ then I’d use it even less.
But each to their own.
See I’d use Notepad++ if I was coding or doing any kind of actual file editing.
However, when I’m at work and need to take a phone call, the tabs in Notepad and the auto saving are literally game changing for me.
That being said I haven’t bothered with the AI stuff in it at all, and it feels as usual, Microsoft doesn’t stop when they have a Good Thing already, they keep pushing it beyond that point for their interests. And now we’re left with not a basic editor but a personal assistant.
Long live Linux and freedom of choice.
But that is literally what I use notepad++ for: tabs, keeping unsaved files (good for temporary things like reminders) and also because I swear it opens faster than notepad.
Never heard of Tutanota mail, anyone here know anything about it?
I use the free version, it’s ok. Not as user friendly of feature packed as gmail. I think they renamed to just “tuta”.
I find the web interface and android app are a bit limited - I think you need to pay to get decent searching and autofilter/rules and so on. If stuff is important you need to stick a tag or a folder on it fairly soon othewise it might become hard to find.
Option for encryption, but I rarely use that because I don’t trust recipients to understand why they should care.
Based . . . can’t use that wordLocated in Germany so believe what you like about GDPR and privacy laws and stuff like that.Overall I’m happy with it. It’s fine for just doing your basic sbemail stuff. It hasn’t been good enough to convince me to go for paid version, so I can’t say about the paid features.
I use the paid version and it’s a huge upgrade. You can administer your own domain, set up a catchall email, arbitrary numbers of emails you can send from, etc.
It’s definitely not as snappy as Gmail though.
I mourn Notepad as well, but Notepad++ is great and it hasn’t smeared shit on itself yet.
Notepad++ really earning the ++ once again.
Cantankerously and all at once.
Now that’s the way to do it!
Notepad++ is a great option if you absolutely need to be on Windows. I started using it at work because all of my colleagues were on it, now I install it on any box I have running Windows while I set them up.
The plugins are great on Notepad++ too! I use it for work, JSON Viewer makes raw jsons much easier to parse through. Compare is really nice too to compare different files and spot their differences.
Plus it’s one of the only editors left that gives a single shit about your computer’s resources.
Vim? Ed? Nano? Pico?
There’s a lot of discussion here without any mention of Sublime Text.
Are you even a programmer if you don’t just do everything through
ed?I think my programming career was notepad++ then sublime, then vscode, and presumably now I should start using Cursor but I can’t bring myself to do it.
my journey was notepad++, vim, atom, vim again, neovim
I’ve been on neovim for a while now too. The purist in my kind of want to get back into basic vim again, but I like how neovim project handles things (from what I overhear anyway, not super involved or anything).
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Feeling the same, and currently in process of dumbing down my tech and decoupling from major tech platforms. They really got us by the balls.
Long live open source!
Learn to use Vim. It can be anywhere and everywhere.
Yeah, but if you’re forced to use Windows, then installing and running vim is a nightmare (unless you want gvim, but I don’t think anyone wants that).
Huh, I never noticed any issues when I used to use gvim (a fair few years back, mind). What’s the problem with it?
Vim is hell to learn (a few weeks), but the second best time investment return I’ve made of any skill, ever (1st was learning to walk).
Does it run this new OS? emacs? It’s a great OS but doesn’t have a great text editor.
No, no, no, you’re thinking of iMacs which are Apple’s all in one desktop offering. But they can definitely run MacVim.
with emacs evil mode, you can add a pretty good text editor to the emacs ecosystem: vim
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I’m gradually immersing myself in Linux until my Macbook loses macOS support, at which point I’ll go full time on Asahi, having learned the ropes from Mint on my old Mac mini.
There are still some things that send me scuttling back to macOS, glad that Preview exists with its easy to operate editing and PDF viewing. But I’ll learn to make that stuff second nature in Linux. Eventually.
Hopefully Asahi will support it
It’s an M2 Air, so it does. Runs very well on it, in fact. But as it currently doesn’t support external displays it’s a little limiting. Other than that, it’s a decent experience. But ultimately macOS is still somewhat more polished.
I never really thought about just how personal Notepad is for me. Even the Notes app on my phone. I wouldn’t want anyone to look through any of it. I write some embarrassing shit. Pointless backstories for my video game protagonists when they don’t already have one. Drafts for important upcoming conversations. You name it. Get the fuck out of my space. Fortunately I’m still using Notepad++, but I’m sure Microsoft will slide its dick into that too, eventually.
That’s how it felt when Google announced Gemini into Gmail.
A lot of my friends and family didn’t understand the issue.
Google said a decade ago that gmail is like your secretary parsing through your mail to hekp out with scheduling etc., it was never to be trusted
A more notepad similar program instead of Libre stuff (for windows folk) https://www.editpadlite.com/en.html
If you can find the original editpad floating out on the net, it’s notepad without the file size limit, ancient shareware. The pro version is pretty sweet too, one of very few pieces of software I’ve paid for out of pocket.
Found the original, Jan keeps it alive.
https://www.editpadclassic.com/I lied, no download there anymore, but it probably exist somewhere.
Notepad is their digital safe space? Come on.
