Besides VSCodium (which isn’t really a fork, it’s just building from the source code of VSCode without the Microsoft stuff), there aren’t any VSCode forks/derivatives that aren’t AI-assisted editors (see Cursor, Windsurf, those are the main two, right?).
That feels a bit weird to me, as many other pieces of software have lots of forks and derivatives (browsers, operating systems, email clients, emulators, PDF viewers, Fediverse clients, etc.). I guess people who would bother to create a fork and doesn’t want to put AI in everything just uses a different editor.
There’s nothing wrong with VSCodium, it’s awesome. My only gripe with it is that the rpm package takes ages to update compared to everything else I use, which is weird. Other than that issue, it runs fine, and I like the flexibility that plugins give me. I just find it odd that there aren’t any other VSCode derivatives/forks.
What would you want a VSCode fork to do that can’t be easily done with extensions? (which Codium can run)
It’s more about not reinventing the wheel. A fork needs to have a reason to exist, because it takes significant effort to maintain and develop, and there is significant opportunity cost when that level of development activity is committed to that purpose. If there’s no reason to have a fork, then it’s more efficient to keep all the development energy and momentum focused in one place. And for Codium, that place is the extension repository.
If Microsoft starts actively making the core software worse, restricting or stopping updates to the open source code, tying telemetry into features in ways difficult to remove, or otherwise sabotaging the functionality or features of the non-Microsoft parts of the code, there may eventually be a need for more, harder forks taking things in potentially different directions to get around Microsoft’s interference. But since that hasn’t happened, the non-Microsoft build process remains quite trivial and VSCode remains a perfectly cromulent editor when building it without the Microsoft crap, there’s really no need for any other forks. Codium does everything it would be reasonably expected to do.
Because market size for code editors is very small compared to email, games, document viewers and social networks.
Microsoft is a notorious waste of time. They place no value on people over profit and they screw over everything. Most people likely just use emacs and vim for independent stuff, or whatever company junk elsewhere.
I write scientific articles with inline R code in Latex (using knitr), so I need syntax highlighting that jumps between two different languages within the document as well as spell checking and advanced (non AI) grammar tools for the text documents. Also I want something that looks kinda minimalistic and neat as a writing interface - there is more writing than coding involved.
I’m sure there’s some wizard somewhere who can do everything I need in Emacs, but I’m not terribly sophisticated. I just want something that works. Sadly, as much as I try to avoid anything Microsoft, VS Codium is the only thing I’ve found that fits my needs in a good way.
I’ve tried to set up Void, which is essentially FOSS Cursor, if that’s what you’re looking for.
You’ve tried, and?
I was unable to use Ollama with it, which I wanted to do. I also considered using LMStudio for it as well.
From what I’ve heard, a big reason is that Microsoft keeps essential language support plugins proprietary. If your fork would become too successful, Microsoft could make more plugins proprietary or somehow limit access to their plugin ecosystem.
I guess, I should throw in that there is Eclipse Theia, which tries to establish an own plugin ecosystem: https://theia-ide.org/
Not a fork, but also not ai infested is pulsar. It’s the reincarnated atom, with lots of active development.
I still prefer it over vscode anything, the git plugin is far superior to vscode.
Why would there need to be? What would a fork do?
On other editors, I like VSCodium the best. Something like Neovim or Helix is a bit too hardcore for me, and I like having a folder tree to navigate between different files. Sublime Text isn’t open-source and, in my experience, VSCodium is more customisable with plugins and such. Lite XL is one I tried recently and seems interesting with a bunch of plugins as well, but doesn’t include a GUI for the settings page (there’s a plugin for that though, but strange that it’s not built-in…). I still like Lite XL, it’s got support for a bunch of languages. The main drawback for me is that there doesn’t seem to be a git branch tree or any way to run code within the code editor.
I use Kate, which meets most of your requirements, except that it doesn’t have a huge plugin ecosystem.
I think I’ve tried that before and didn’t like it, but completely forgot the reason why. Maybe it’s time for another go?
It does have some quirks. I feel like there’s one workflow that works really well, which is the workflow of the single core maintainer, and whenever you deviate from that, then yeah, features may be missing that you’d expect or things just don’t work as smoothly.
But it has gotten some cool upgrades in recent years, like LSP support has basically transformed it into a mini-IDE and when you press Ctrl+Alt+i, you get a text search across all menu entries.
There’s probably more things that I’m forgetting, but the quirkiness also got reduced quite a bit. Like, I would always use the File System Browser plugin, because it was the only one that worked well enough for what I wanted, and I just dealt with manually navigating into each project directory. Nowadays, I prefer the Project plugin, because that now works smoothly enough for that same purpose.
It’s still a bit weird that I can’t drag-and-drop files from Project plugin’s file tree, but I just click “Open Containing Folder” in the context menu and then do it in my file manager, so it isn’t a huge deal…I’ve installed Kate and it seems pretty good. It’s quite customisable in terms of the layout and such(similar to VSCodium), and it seems to have most of the things I need. I’ll have to try both of them out and decide on which I like better.
Two things about Kate I don’t like though: there’s no everforest theme (fortunately I found Tokyo Night to be pretty good), and the file picket window doesn’t follow my GNOME theme and is a bright white box. I guess that’s because Kate doesn’t support GTK themes?
Also, what’s the difference between what looks like three different folder tree buttons (Document seems to only show one file, and then Project and File Browser plugin both show the full tree of the folder you have opened)? And is there an equivalent for the “Code Runner” plugin? If not, I guess I could always just run “python filename.py”, but a play/run button would be nice.
Oh, good question, how to make Kate work well under GNOME. I have to admit, I use it under KDE, so never really dealt with the theming. But I believe, “Tokyo Night” is only the editor theme. Can you select a different Window Color scheme in the menubar under Settings?
what’s the difference between what looks like three different folder tree buttons (Document seems to only show one file, and then Project and File Browser plugin both show the full tree of the folder you have opened)?
- “Documents” only shows your currently open tabs. To be honest, I never quite figured out what it’s good for, but I think it makes more sense, if you use Kate for authoring texts or such. I normally disable it in the settings, under Plugins → Documents Tree.
- “Filesystem” is kind of like a mini-file-manager. You can navigate to any directory you want in there, or have it always show the current folder of the document you have currently open. But it isn’t aware of what a repository is, so depending on how you open Kate, it may not show the right folder and jumping to the current document’s folder will put you into a sub-directory of your repository. As I said above, I also mostly keep that one disabled these days, although I can see it being useful.
- “Projects” is aware of Git. It always shows the current repository folder, if you are in one, expanding the file tree from there. It hides files listed in .gitignore. And yeah, in my opinion just what you want to use for programming.
And is there an equivalent for the “Code Runner” plugin? If not, I guess I could always just run “python filename.py”, but a play/run button would be nice.
There is a plugin called “Build & Run”, which you can enable and which might do what you’re looking for. I typically prefer running from the terminal, so I can’t say too much about it…
If I ever get a new computer, I might have to try a distro based on KDE…I’m not bothered to switch DE on my current computer
Yes, I am able to change the window colour scheme from light to dark. Just the file open dialogue is a bright white which is weird…
Also, thanks for answering my questions, that was really helpful :D
Oh, I thought you meant one of those file tree sidebars was white.
Does the file picker look somewhat like this?
Then it’s using the KDE file picker. I believe, it should be possible to make it use the GTK file picker, by configuring the “desktop portal” correctly.
Here is a guide for doing the reverse of what you need (GTK application in KDE Plasma): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Uniform_look_for_Qt_and_GTK_applications#Consistent_file_dialog_under_KDE_Plasma
Maybe you can do the steps the other way around or it helps you find a better guide…And no problem. 🙂
For git, there is the git diff and blame plugins, but there’s no plugin for a git tree…
There is also Trae created by bytedance
Looking at their main page, it seems incredibly AI-related…it explicitly states that it will “build software solutions for you”
The ones that come to mind are not forks but whole new projects aiming to improve way more of the fundamental issues in VSCode, like Zed (https://zed.dev/)
not ai focused
Zed is a next-generation code editor designed for high-performance collaboration with humans and AI.
Yeah they shifted focus towards AI pretty recently, in the last year or so :(
