20 Best HTML Editors for Linux and UNIX

KompoZer is a good WYSIWYG editor. It is based on the popular Nvu editor — only it is called an “unofficial bug-fix release.” KompoZer was conceived by some people who really liked Nvu, but were fed up with the slow release schedules and poor support. So they took it over and released a less buggy version of the software. Ironically, there hasn't been a new release of KompoZer since 2007.

Version: 0.7.10
Score: 127 / 41%

Nvu is a good WYSIWYG editor. I prefer text editors to WYSIWYG editors, but if you don’t, then Nvu is a good choice, especially considering that it’s free. I love that it has a site manager to allow you to review the sites that you’re building. It's surprising that this software is free. Feature highlights: XML support, advanced CSS support, full site management, built-in validator, and international support as well as WYSIWYG and color coded XHTML editing.

Version: 1
Score: 125 / 40%

Notepad++ is a Notepad replacement editor that adds a lot of features to your standard text editor. Like most text editors, this is not specifically a web editor, but can be used to edit and maintain HTML. With the XML plugin, it can check for XML errors quickly, including XHTML. This is an editor popular with About.com Guides.

Version: 5.8.2
Score: 121 / 39%

Like vi, Emacs is found on most Linux systems which makes it easy for you to edit a page even if you don't have your standard software. Emacs is a lot more complicated than vi and so offers more features, but I find it harder to use. Feature highlights: XML support, scripting support, advanced CSS support, and a built-in validator, as well as color coded HTML editing.

Version: 23.2
Score: 120.5 / 39%

Arachnophilia is a text HTML editor with a lot of functionality. The color coding makes it easy to use. It has a Windows native version and a JAR file for Macintosh and Linux users. With the 5.3 release (2008), it added XHTML functionality which makes it a fine free tool for web developers.

Version: 5.4
Score: 120 / 39%

Oxygen is a high quality XML editor that allows you to validate and manage your XML documents, including XHTML. It offers validation and schema evaluation of your documents, as well as various XML languages like XPath and XHTML. It’s not a good choice for web designers, but if you have to handle XML documents in your work, then it’s a good choice.

Version: 12
Score: 113.5 / 37%

EditiX is an XML editor. You can use it to write valid XHTML documents, but it's major strength is in the XML and XSLT functionality. It's doesn't rank as well for editing web pages specifically, but if you do a lot of XML and XSLT, you'll like this editor.

Version: 2010 sp1
Score: 113 / 36%

Serna Free is an open source version of the Syntext Enterprise XML Document Editor. It is a WYSIWYG XML editor that makes it easy to review your XML documents. This is not an HTML editor. You can use it to edit XHTML documents, but you will not have many features that are standard in most HTML editors. But if you do a lot of XML editing, this tool might be useful.

Version: 4.2
Score: 113 / 36%

Geany is a text editor for developers. It should run on any platform that can support the GTK libraries. It is meant to be an IDE that is small and fast loading. So you can develop all your projects in one editor. It supports HTML, XML, PHP, and many other web and programming languages.

Version: 0.19.1
Score: 111 / 36%

jEdit is a text editor written in Java. It is primarily a text editor, but includes things like support for unicode, color coding, and allows for macros to add-in features. Feature highlights: XML support, scripting support, advanced CSS support, and international support as well as color coded text XHTML editing.

Version: 4.3.2
Score: 108.5 / 35%