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.

    • sbird@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      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?

      • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        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…

        • sbird@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          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.

          • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
            3·
            1 day ago

            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…

            • sbird@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
              2·
              1 day ago

              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

            • sbird@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
              2·
              1 day ago

              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