Learn about some Atom editor forks which came up the sunsetting (discontinuation) of Atom by GitHub. We also get introduced to some alternatives to Atom in this blog post. The significance of community-driven forks is underscored in this post.
Introduction
Atom editor, an open source editor and programming tool, was first launched on June 2015 by github. It was sunset on December 15, 2022. In Mid-2022, GitHub announced that Atom would be sunset on December 15, 2022. In this post, we will take a quick look at some atom editor forks. A fork is a variation of a software project steered by a distinct team of developers, and is largely based on the original source code.
हिंदी में सारांश
एटम संपादक फोर्क्स के कुछ के बारे में जानें | गिटहब द्वारा एटम के सूर्यास्त (बंद) के समय कुछ फोर्क्स सामने आए। इस ब्लॉग पोस्ट में हमें एटम के कुछ विकल्पों से भी परिचित कराया गया है। इस पोस्ट में ओपन सोर्स, समुदाय-संचालित सॉफ़्टवेयर के महत्व को रेखांकित किया गया है।
या पोस्टचा मराठीत सारांश
या ब्लॉग पोस्ट मध्ये आपल्याकडे गिटहबद्वारे निर्मित केलेल्या आटम एडिटर बद्धल जाणूया. डिसेंबर 2022 मधे गिटहब नी आटम ची निर्मिती संपुष्टात आणली। त्यामोले या एडिटर चे काही फोर्क निर्माण जाले. फोर्क हा सौफ्टवेर प्रकल्पाची एक प्रतीलिपी केवा कौपी असते. फोर्क सॉफ्टवेअरच्या मूळ कोडचं असतं. आटम चे हे फोर्क कोणते आणि त्याच बरोबर आटम ला परियाई एडिटर कोणते, या बद्धल आपण या ब्लॉग पोस्ट मधे जाणूया.
Reasons for Atom’s popularity
Atom was popular for a number of reasons. Some of them are:
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Open source: Atom was free and open source software, which meant that anyone could contribute to its development. This led to a large and active community of developers who created extensions and plugins for Atom.
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Customizable: Atom was highly customizable. Users could change the editor’s appearance, behavior, and even its core functionality. This made Atom a great choice for developers who wanted a text editor that could be tailored to their specific needs.
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Extensible: Atom was extensible. Users could create their own extensions and plugins to add new features to the editor. This made Atom a great choice for developers who wanted to extend its functionality.
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Built on Electron: Atom was built on Electron, which is a framework that allows developers to create cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies. This made Atom easy to use on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
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Feature-rich: Atom had a wide range of features, including syntax highlighting, code folding, and linting. It also had a built-in Git client, which made it easy to work with Git repositories.
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Large community: Atom had a large and active community of users and developers. This meant that there were always new extensions and themes being created, and that there was always help available if you needed it.
Installing Atom on Linux, March 2022
Atom Editor Download for MacOs (Oct 2020)
Reasons for Sun-setting Atom
The reasons for why atom editor was sunset is not the focus of this post However, according to github, a number of reasons drove the decision, including the increasing popularity of other text editors such as Visual Studio Code. This decision caused quite a bit of disappointment and uproar, alongwith launch of some atom editor forks.
Atom Editor Forks
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Atom Community
This fork of Atom is maintained by the Atom community, and is designed to be a community-driven continuation of Atom. It is still under development, but it is already feature-rich and customizable -
Atom-ng
This fork is a fork of Atom that is designed to be more lightweight and efficient. It is still under development, but it has the potential to be a good alternative to Atom for users who are looking for a more performant editor.It is based on the Electron framework and uses the AngularJS framework for its UI. -
This fork is a fork of Atom that is designed to be more modern and feature-rich. It is still under development, but it has the potential to be a good alternative to Atom for users who are looking for a more cutting-edge editor. It is based on the Electron framework and uses the Vue.js framework for its UI.
Alternatives to atom editor
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VSCodium
VSCodium is a free and open-source fork of Visual Studio Code that does not include telemetry data collection. It is a lightweight and fast editor that is similar to Visual Studio Code. It is a cross-platform editor that is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Screenshot from my laptop showing VSCodium running on Linux Mint.
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Sublime Text
Sublime Text is a proprietary text editor that is known for its speed and flexibility. It is a popular choice for web developers and programmers. t is known for its speed and its powerful features, such as syntax highlighting, code folding, and snippets. -
VSCode
Visual Studio Code is a free and open-source code editor developed by Microsoft. It is a powerful and versatile editor that is used by a wide range of developers. -
Brackets Text Editor (Windows)
Brackets is a free and open-source text editor developed by Adobe. It is designed for web development and includes features such as live preview and Emmet.It is available for Windows only. Brackets is known for its live preview feature, which allows you to see your changes as you make them.
VScode Interface. Source: github
References
Discussion on Reddit: Alternatives to Atom Editor
Atom’s repository on github (read only)
The post “Atom Editor forks: Keeping the Leagacy alive” is a part of a series of blogs on Linux and Open Source. For more posts in this series, visit here.
