Geany vs Mousepad

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.

Mousepad is a free Linux editor for quickly changing text files, rather than a development environment. It supports column editing, extensions, and content search. Editing options such as word wrap and automatic indentation are available in the preferences dialog and Document menu. Settings can also be accessed through Dconf Editor, gsettings, or dconf. Printing settings are kept separately in ~/.config/Mousepad/mousepadrc. After first use, Mousepad generates a configurable keybindings file. Version 0.5.9 added a shortcuts editor, which requires Libxfce4ui 4.17.5, and a CSS style class named “mousepad” for theming. Required packages are GLib 2.52.0 or later, GTK 3.22.0 or later, and GtkSourceView 3.24.0 or 4.0.0 or later. Optional components include gspell 1.6.0 or later and libxfce4ui 4.17.5 or later. The documentation lists version 0.7.0, released on 2026-03-02, and links to the current source archive and bug-reporting information.