# Kate text editor

49 Hacker News commenters recommended Kate text editor and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Fast, native KDE text editor that people use for quick edits and coding, with LSP support and a plugin system. Caveat: some find it has too many options and features.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast, responsive native app (5 comments): "With Kate it is like with a basic text edit, characters appears instantly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341613)) "Good old style editor that is a native app, not an electron app." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47333348)) "A key benefit of it is that it's not an electron app." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47157712))
- Good for quick file edits (3 comments): "I find KATE on KDE is good enough, when I just want to edit a file" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47461692)) "just put in the URL and edit the file in kate!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46472508)) "It is actually a fantastic document editor." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47951349))
- VS Code-like features with LSP (5 comments): "Kate is very good, you can legitimately use it as a vscode replacement if you want." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47290226)) "its base feature set isn't too different from a base VS Code installation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45971719)) "my main programming editor, coupled with clangd for C/C++ programming" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48358944))
- Useful file browser and CLI (3 comments): "Kate has a decent file browser for hierarchy and it'll stay in place and not return to a weird default path when you close it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47334434)) "Another nice thing is the ability to collect paths, line and column numbers from the output for navigation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48228263)) "Examples of good CLI integration I regularly use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49388892))

## What people warn about

- Too many options and features (2 comments): "it has way too many option I will never use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49532372)) "which was great, had too much going on" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49532243))
- Slower and heavier than rivals (2 comments): "it is slower than Sublime Text in my machine though still tolerable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534304)) "takes much longer to open up and looks much much heavier" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48361355))
- Missing features and extensions (2 comments): "It's missing features, but it sure is snappy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48185600)) "I just wish the extension ecosystem was more fleshed out" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47335473))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Zed](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zed.md): 700 recommend
- [GNU Emacs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/emacs.md): 648 recommend
- [Vim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vim.md): 513 recommend
- [Visual Studio Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio-code.md): 485 recommend
- [Neovim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/neovim.md): 295 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Kate text editor", https://hackerapproved.com/p/kate/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).