Bluefish vs Geany

Bluefish is a free, open-source desktop editor for programmers and web developers writing websites, scripts and programming code. It runs on Linux, macOS and Windows and supports more than 30 markup and programming languages. The multi-document interface can open 1,000 or more documents, with more than 10,000 tested simultaneously. Editing tools include regular-expression search and replace, code folding, auto-completion and automatic tag closing. Project support restores settings for each project. Through gvfs, Bluefish works with remote files over FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV, CIFS and other protocols. Users can connect external programs such as make, lint, weblint, xmllint, tidy and javac, or run custom programs and scripts. The Flatpak build has strict security restrictions that block integration with some system tools and the web browser, although internal functionality works. Community support is volunteer-run through a mailing list and bug tracker. Bluefish is released under the GNU GPL license.

Geany is a free, lightweight integrated development environment for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It provides syntax highlighting, code completion, call tips, and code folding for languages and file types including C, Java, PHP, HTML, Python, Perl, and Pascal. An embedded terminal emulator is included, and plugins can extend the editor. Geany supports macro recording and column editing, but not multi-cursor editing. The project distributes it under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. Linux, BSD, and similar systems are directed toward distribution packages, including packages named for Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu. Prebuilt Windows and macOS binaries are available from geany.org, along with links to additional third-party packages and a portable Windows version. Building from source requires GTK3 libraries and headers, dependency libraries, and C and C++ compilers. Geany has no free trial because the listed plan is free.