As more and more users have multiple operating systems installed, it becomes a smart move looking for programs that work on all of these platforms. Say, for instance, an individual has Windows, Mac OS X and Linux installed on the same computer. Instead of having Internet Explorer, Safari and Epiphany as your web browsers, why not have Firefox (or Opera) installed on all three?
You could use LibreOffice as your office suite on all three platforms, and VLC as your media player of choice. The benefit to this approach is in the learning curve. Instead of having to learn three different programs, which may offer different options in different places, you have one program, which behaves the same way no matter which operating system you boot into.
The same can be said for people who build websites or create application code. Why run a different text editor or IDE on all three platforms when a cross-platform tool will do nicely? In the spirit of Firefox (and built on Firefox technology), is a text editor called Komodo Edit.
Komodo Edit is a “little brother” to the commercial Komodo IDE (which has an asking price starting at $295.00), but is free, open source, and full of features such as support for multiple languages (PHP, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Perl, Tcl, XML, HTML 5, and CSS 3, among others), offers syntax coloring, syntax checking, folding and auto-complete.
It offers remote file editing, macros, Vi keybindings, code snippets and a robust extension system a la Firefox. For Mac and Windows users, installation is as simple as grabbing the .msi or .dmg package, but Linux users will need to go through a slightly more in-depth process. Here’s how to install Komodo Edit with as little hassle as possible.
First, click this link to grab the latest 32-bit version of Komodo Edit.
Note: the 64-bit package can be found at this link.
Those links, and free trial downloads of Komodo IDE, may be found here.
At the moment, 6.1.3 is the latest version of Komodo Edit/IDE. This will change in the future (RC2 of version 7 is already available), so try this page to see all download options. The installation process should remain unchanged, except for the package numbers.
Once you’ve downloaded extract the archive. You can do this by right-clicking and choosing the Extract Here option.
Now open up your Terminal.
From the Terminal, ‘cd’ to the new directory, by typing cd /path/to/komodo_edit_folder/ (whatever your actual path is, depending on the version number).
Finally, type sudo ./install.sh to launch the installation script.
You’ll be asked for your password, so provide that, and then for the installation path. By default, Komodo Edit will be installed into your Home directory, in a folder called Komodo-Edit-6, but you can change that. For example, we chose /opt/Komodo-Edit-6/ as our installation path.
As the installation progresses, you’ll see a large block of text as different files and libraries are moved into your new directory.
When the installation is finished, you’re ready to being using Komodo Edit, except for adding the new installation directory to your PATH, which will allow you to call up Komodo Edit by simply typing komodo into the Terminal, instead of /opt/Komodo-Edit-6/bin/komodo (or whatever your path is). If you look at the last bits of text above the “Thank you for using Komodo” text at the end of the installation, you’ll see two options for making the komodo binary more accessible. The first is to type export PATH=”/opt/Komodo-Edit-6/bin:$PATH” to add the new directory to the path (this works for Bash users).
You also have the option to create a symbolic link from the actual ‘komodo’ file to one located in a standard directory, by typing sudo ln -s “/opt/Komodo-Edit-6/bin/komodo” /usr/local/bin/komodo instead of adding it to your PATH.
Regardless of which option you choose, you will now find Komodo Edit can be launched by typing komodo into the Terminal or a Run prompt. It should also show up in your Application menu, under Development.
As said earlier, this entire installation process isn’t any harder, really, than installing in Windows or Mac OS X, but it is a bit more complex, due to the wide variety of Linux distributions. Regardless, you’re now completely set to begin using Komodo Edit, so have fun coding!