Finally, the Zed code editor/IDE is now available for Linux systems.

Since there's nothing Linux users appreciate more than high-quality apps that are also free and open-source, Zed is bound to be of interest, especially after Atom was discontinued at the end of 2022.

The fact that I mentioned Atom is not a coincidence since Zed was designed and built by the same creators of Atom and Tree-sitter, a popular parser generator.

Zed markets itself as an app that "combines the power of an IDE with the responsiveness of a lightweight editor [...]." In truth, Zed is more IDE than it is a code editor, but I'm delighted to say that there's a lot to love about its code editor-inspired philosophy.

More to the point, Zed is an extensive IDE that's remarkably lightweight. The fact that it's fully written in Rust is definitely a plus, as this app is all about speed, performance, and staying in the flow. Oh, and it works on both X11 and Wayland.

When it comes to features, there's a lot to cover. Zed offers an integrated terminal (quick access to the shell from the same place you edit the code), a cool Vim mode (with VS Code style default bindings, Vim-style modal editing, as well as shortcuts with proper tooltips), as well as many light and dark themes (and more available via extensions).

There are also all the language-related bells and whistles such as autocompletion, syntax highlighting (with support for a wide range of programming languages), diagnostics, refactorings, and effortless code navigation.

Zed is also very collaboration-focused. Thanks to its wide range of collaboration tools, multiple users/developers can work on any project within a shared workspace. Plus, there's also the benefit of real-time conversations.

In case you were wondering, that's not all. One important characteristic of Zed is that it's GPU-accelerated (powered by the Vulkan API). Combine Zed with a decent modern computer (and don't forget the editor's Rust foundation), and you get a very fast, very powerful IDE that's capable of handling large projects with ease.

Since this is a modern IDE we're talking about, unsurprisingly, Zed also features OpenAI integration. The best part about this is that the whole GPT chatbox thingy doesn't take a lot of the workspace/editing area.

Since Zed has just become available for Linux, I have to mention something about the installation at least. The easiest way to try out Zed (at least for now) is to run the following script: "curl https://zed.dev/install.sh | sh". It's important to note that the single command only works on 64-bit (both Intel and AMD) and ARM systems.

Other ways of installing Zed include building it yourself from source, available on the app's official GitHub repo. Sadly, as of this writing, there are no Flatpak or Snap Store installation options.

While using Zed, you get a feeling that this is not the product of a very small team. However, that's exactly the case. Zed is built by a small team, but this isn't this team's "first rodeo." In some ways, Zed is the spiritual successor of Atom, and in most ways, it's actually better, as Atom was based on Electron.

Zed is a really good, all-encompassing IDE for the modern age and the attention to detail is something to be admired. Give it a try for yourself and see what's what.