Sublime Forum

Sublime for Linux :D

#1

Let me preface this by the saying that I’ve only known about this editor less than twenty four hours and have evangalized it already to everyone that I work with. I must say that I am incredibly impressed with this editor and I feel that many of the innovations it contains will help improve the editing space as a whole.

That said, I haven’t seen the request anywhere else, so I can has native sublime for linux? I don’t really expect it, and I don’t know that it’d be the most profitable venture, but I’m gonna put the request out there anyways, because damnit it’d be awesome! I know that it will run under wine, and believe me I’ve used it, but as with almost all wine apps, it has that sort of sluggishness about it which is intolerable in a good text editor. I currently use windows for my work as its required, but I use linux on all of my home computers, only now it pains me not being able to use a native sublime text editor in my favorite OS.

Well thats my spiel, keep up the good work! You have created what I consider the single best editor I’ve ever used, and I’ve moonlighted with many an editor. However, if you ever get a wild hair and decide to go with a linux version, I’ll buy it three times!..seriously

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#2

I’m sure I speak for many when I say there is much interest in subby running on linux. (and from there, on osx to compete with textmate :smiley:)

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#3

I too am hoping for a linux version as well, as I am in the process of moving to linux for my primary development work… I don’t know what I will do on linux for a text editor and am just not able to get into vim/emacs after sublime.

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#4

I’d also like a native version, but using it in Wine gets the job done.

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#5

Nothing useful to add, I just wanted to voice my support for sublime running natively in linux. I haven’t paid for an editor since I bought a license for UltraEdit on Windows years ago. This is the first editor I’ve seen that I’d be willing to pay for in linux.

Please!

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#6

OS X version++

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#7

An OS X version would be interesting. One reason Sublime is so good is because of it’s GUI and layout (IMO anyways), so it’d be interesting to see if changing to Cocoa would retain this. On my Mac, I just run Sublime under Wine.

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#8

Don’t do it, Jon! Fighting a war on two or three fronts would be suicide.

This isn’t a feature request in the same way that asking for a new language or a file browser is. Jon can’t just do this then move on to another feature. It’s a strategic choice to start producing several new products. There would be some serious, company-killing problems with doing it, and I’d like to convince people that they really don’t want Jon to spend his time porting ST to other platforms.

As I said, this isn’t a feature, but a new product. Every actual feature that gets added has to be developed, tested, and supported on every platform. This means a huge amount more development and testing time. Remember that any code that deals with files is now suspicious. 3D rendering, the heart of the Sublime Text experience, must now run on a new platform. Any python code has to be re-checked to see if it relies on Windows behaviour. Community plugins will fail on linux, or be developed just for it, creating a world of half-arsed addins.

Instead of hacking one path through the jungle, Jon must now hack two or three paths. Inevitably, he’ll get less far down either. This will kill the forward motion of the product. Fewer features will be developed, since each one is more expensive. Language support, project support, documentation, package help, API tools – they’ll all advance more slowly.

Innovation also suffers. When you straddle several platforms, it means you can only include features that all of them can support. For example, Windows 7 has a new feature called Libraries, which might integrate very nicely with the idea of Sublime Text Projects. A Windows 7-aware version of Sublime can help me find my files more easily using the Libraries features of windows. But libraries aren’t available in Linux, so If Jon tries to straddle the two worlds, he has to write something that fails to take advantage of the build-in capabilities of Windows.

And why should he support linux? So that a few potential customers, on a platform famous for being free, would get a slightly less sluggish experience if they buy. Worse, the likelihood is that someone who buys a linux licence will not buy a Windows licence, meaning that all the effort doesn’t positively affect Jon’s bottom line at all. There’s worse than no money in it.

Lastly, Jon charges for yearly licences. Which means people choosing to repurchase do it if, and only if, this year’s version has enough new features over last year’s version. Dividing across platforms means that, when that year is up, the number and quality of features will be lower; when deciding whether to repurchase, windows users are more likely to choose not to renew.

I say all this because I want Sublime to survive, and I think the idea of a linux version is both perpetual – people muse about it a regular basis – and a really, really bad idea for ST.

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#9

I don’t think you have to repurchase sublime every year, to my understanding is a one-time fee. The exception is for example sublimetext releases a new “paid upgrade” version. Which I believe would be some massive rework done on it… like for ex, a linux version or something… Anyways this is my understanding of it, if it’s not like this then I think Jon can clarify this for us :smile:

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#10

I agree with SteveCooperOrg. Jon has the freedom to concentrate developement using the operating system of his choice.

After years of programming in Unix and now randomly using Linux I prefer ST in Windows as my main editor. I imagine a Linux port of ST will not feel as good to my fingertips as the origin does.

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#11

I understood Sublime Text 2.0 for windows to also count. I think you get all the V.1* and V1 betas, but if Jon moves up and does a major update, then you need to pay to move to V2.

If that’s the case, Jon’s resale turnover is based on a user making a decision, every 12 months: would they like to move up one version (say, V1.2 to V2.0)? If, after a year there is no version 2.0, Jon gets no money from resales. Now, if Jon makes ST1.2 for Linux, As a windows user, I won’t even have the opportunity to buy V2.0 for windows, because it won’t be there to buy; or if it is, it won’t have enough new stuff to be tempting. So Jon won’t get my money, because there’s nothing for me to buy.

This is why I can’t agree with a sideways move – one that doesn’t push towards 2.0. It doesn’t benefit any of his existing customers, or most of his potential customers. Until Jon’s saturated the Windows market (which he’s nowhere near doing) I think it’s better to concentrate on the one market.

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#12

I did my best not to introduce any kind of religious dogma into my argument. My problem isn’t with the linux platform. My problem is in wondering how Jon’s time could possibly be used like this and not impact heavily on his current market. And selfishly, on my favourite text editor.

Jon’s in a sweet spot in Windows; ST is the prettiest editor on the platform. It’s also extremely extensible. It appeals to a whole class of developers. I think it’s ready for the big time, and he only needs to crack one market to do very well. Of course, there’s stuff missing; people are evaulating ST right now and holding off buying it for that reason. If jon develops more features, more users cross over that threshold and choose to buy. But as I said at the start of my first post; this isn’t a feature. If jon works on it, ST’s feature set stays static. While it’s static, those people out there evaluating ST are going to find that the product has halted, and not buy. Equally, Jon gets no closer to his V2.0 and to new licence income from existing customers.

A question is, how long would a port like this take? My intuition says that it’s a great deal of work. Almost the entire core of ST would need to be rewritten. AFAIK, ST is a pure Windows beast; built on MFC and DirectX and targetted at file systems like NTFS. My guess is, it’d take about a year to port everything to one platform.

So, if I’m right, ST would get no new features for about a year. That’s a year of reduced income, and a year in which competitors like ‘e’ and textmate make advances while ST stays still. In my book, that’s a bad idea.

[quote=“sublimator”]

Seriously? Puh-lease.[/quote]

I said this because I’ve had my fair share of problems with scripts and packages that could easily have worked on windows, but contained little assumptions of linux. Just little things, like perl scripts assuming I had a HOME directory. Things that make the script fail.

Assumptions work both ways, of course; assuming that ‘’ is the directory separator, or that there will be a registry, or that symbolic links exist, or that your ‘alt-x’ keybinding will work when you don’t have an ‘alt’ key.

However, it happens, it happens all the time, and it means that there will be addins that just don’t work on your chosen platform.

I agree. How will a linux version not hinder Jon’s effort to get these things in place?

It’s enough that almost no-one does it. If it were cheap, TextMate would be available on Windows, and Photoshop on Linux.

Those products that do tend to build, not on Windows or Linux, but on another platfrom like the JVM or Mozilla’s XUL. ST isn’t a java product, so porting is just going to be hard. Porting MFC to Cocoa, or MFC to Gnome, is expensive and hard.

There’s a nice article in Joel Spolsky’s ‘Best Software Writing’ book, on the cost of porting Word 6.0 from Windows to Mac. It gives a bit on insight into the cost of moving pure windows app to pure mac apps. Have a read. It’s almost directly applicable to this situation, and tellingly, it’s an article that starts “Mom always said, ‘the best thing about beating your head against the wall is that it feels good when you stop’”

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vPvhzDqZlaAC&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=joel+spolsky+word+for+mac&source=bl&ots=ck3hPaMfVc&sig=GAPP1Ixa1NomSBf3dHA12ShZdM8&hl=en&ei=mbzySszjLsL4-AbM4tSrBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

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#13

Nick, you’re not addressing the important parts of the argument. You’re picking short, trivial phrases out of long posts and ignoring the big objections;

  • If cross-platform development were profitable for small companies, ISVs producing mac software would also produce for windows, and they aren’t. See textmate, omnifocus, scrivener, tinderbox.

  • Each new platform slows down all feature development ad infinitum, and immediately halts production of features for current customers.

  • It will hurt ST’s financials. There are startup costs ($1500 for mac development.) There are short- and medium-term costs as fewer customers buy or upgrade as fewer features appear. Lastly, the long-term benefits are unclear; there is little reason to suppose that serving new, small markets (mac and Linux) would be a better strategy than addressing the large, underexploited Windows market.

That’s the core of my argument. I’m happy (really) to be proved wrong on any of these points, to hear counter-evidence and solid arguments. If there are small companies out there doing well straddling over three platforms, that’s counter-evidence. If there’s reason to suppose that Jon has maxed out the windows market, I’d love to hear it. If it can be shown that mac or linux users are much more generous when it comes to buying software, that’s good evidence, too.

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#14

will do :wink:

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#15

Not to inflate the price of sublime or anything. But I would pay for two licenses if it meant I had subby on both windows and linux. Besides, Currently I do about 90% of development on linux so having sublime run on linux would be huge for me.
p.s.
the only competing product (as far as I can tell) would be slickedit.

-elrom

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#16

Wow. Talk about price inflation! Slickedit on Windows+mac clocks in at $449. Yikes.

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#17

I got meself a mac recently and like it pretty well, but I seriously mourn the loss of Sublime. There’s simply no 1:1 replacement for it on OSX. Port it to mac and I’ll throw some more money at you :smiley:

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#18

Sublime works pretty well with Crossover (commercial version of wine), might try giving it a shot if you are dying to have it back. :wink:

I use Crossover Linux + Sublime at work and it works great aside from having to reload the program on config changes, but that is just a minor quirk.

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#19

[quote=“Incendium”]Sublime works pretty well with Crossover (commercial version of wine), might try giving it a shot if you are dying to have it back. :wink:

I use Crossover Linux + Sublime at work and it works great aside from having to reload the program on config changes, but that is just a minor quirk.[/quote]

Oh, excellent! I’ll do that until there’s an official version cough :wink:

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#20

Henrik—Since you’re on a Mac, what exactly is TextMate missing besides the minimap? I’m just curious.

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