There are many alternatives to Leafpad for Linux and since it's discontinued a lot of people are looking for a replacement. The best Linux alternative is Vim, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 100 alternatives to Leafpad and loads of them are available for Linux so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Linux alternatives to Leafpad are Zed Editor, Kate, Neovim and gedit.
Advanced text editor with syntax highlighting, word completion, multiple editing modes for efficiency, plugin and script extensibility, GUI and command-line operation, a thorough help system, and cross-platform support across various operating systems.
Blazing fast code editor offering real-time multi-user collaboration, language-aware syntax highlighting, integrated terminal, multi-buffers for tab-free editing, built-in Vim mode, searchable outline, AI coding assistance, advanced keyboard commands, and cross-platform support.
The Kate project develops two main products: KatePart, the advanced editor component which is used in numerous KDE applications requiring a text editing component, and Kate, a MDI text editor application.
Refactored version of Vim, simplifying maintenance, improving developer contributions, and enabling new user interfaces. Features extensible plugin architecture, lightweight resource usage, syntax highlighting, no registration, ad-free, and distraction-free mode.
Extensible text editor with UTF-8 support, syntax highlighting for several programming and markup languages, remote editing, file reverting, print preview, clipboard operations, powerful search, customizable fonts and colors, line numbering, and plugin support.
GNU nano is a small and friendly text editor. Besides basic text editing, nano offers many extra features like an interactive search and replace, go to line and column number, auto-indentation, feature toggles, internationalization support, and filename tab completion.
GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing. The features of GNU Emacs include:
Lite XL is a lightweight text editor written mostly in Lua — it aims to provide something practical, pretty, small and fast, implemented as simply as possible; easy to modify and extend, or to use without doing either.
Open-source command-line text editor for Windows with a modern interface inspired by MS-DOS Editor, featuring key bindings, lightweight build under 250KB, multi-file handling with ctrl + P, keyboard-optimized navigation, and direct file editing for developers.
Lightweight, open-source code editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux featuring Vim keybindings, built-in Git support, agentic AI editing with multiple models, syntax highlighting, LSP for intelligent completion, fast performance, and efficient workflows.
CudaText is a cross-platform text editor, written in Lazarus / Free Pascal.
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I love vim, but it has an extremely steep learning curve and is terminal-based. Leafpad is a grandma-friendly graphical application for viewing and editing plain text files (in other words notepad.exe for Linux).