Markdown is a text-based markup language that makes use of a simplified syntax which can be converted to HTML. It has grown in popularity since its creation in 2004 by John Gruber and has become many people’s preferred way of creating content for the web.
We have previously shown you the best Markdown editors for Windows, and now it’s time to unveil our best Markdown editors for Linux:
1. Vim
Vim has been around since all the way back in 1991, remarkably maintaining almost the same form it had all those years ago. It’s definitely old-school compared to other options, with plenty of fiddling to do in the way of config files and other minutiae, but persevere and you have an excellent text and Markdown editor.
Vim’s basic Markdown functionality should suffice for most people, with syntax highlighting, formatting shortcuts, and plenty of options for importing and exporting different document formats.
If the default options don’t do it for you, you can download Markdown plugins such as a very robust one by plasticboy.
2. Remarkable
Remarkable is a highly customizable markdown editor that packs a lot of options. It has everything you can expect from a markdown editor such as live preview of your work, exporting to HTML and PDF and custom CSS support. It also supports Github-flavoured markdown as well as spellchecking, word count and MathJax for advanced formatting. Also, there are plenty of configuration options so you can tweak it to your taste and various keyboard shortcuts to speed up markdown formatting.
The pre-packaged installer for Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives is available for download on the developer’s website
3. Mark My Words
Mark My Words is a minimalistic markdown editor specially designed for Elementary OS but will work on any distro. It features a split screen for live preview of your document and can also export to HTML or PDF. Some other features are Syntax Highlighting, Themes, Custom Stylesheet and State Management. This editor is still under development, so more features will be added in time.
In a Ubuntu-based distro, you can install Mark My Words with the following commands:
4. ReText
Retext is another text editor for Linux with its own set of unique features. It supports both markdown and reStructured Text and can export to ODT format in addition to the standard HTML and PDF outputs. There’s also an auto-save feature and support for tabs, so you can work on multiple files at once. Other distinct options are printing support, search text, fullscreen mode, and markdown extensions.
Ubuntu or debian-based users can run the following command to install retext as it is already present in the software repository:
5. Haroopad
Haroopad is a cross-platform text processor that allows to you create web-friendly documents quickly and easily. It has support for all the regular features you would expect from a typical markdown editor and much more. Haroopad allows you to import content from Pastebin, Twitter, Youtube and so on and export them to PDF or HTML. More export options (WordPress, RTF, reStructured Text, ePub, etc.) have been promised for future updates. Furthermore, you can send your documents as an email directly from the app or publish to Tumblr or Evernote.
The pre-packaged installer (32-bit or 64-bit) can be downloaded from the developer’s website.
Are there any Markdown tools we may have missed? Please share your thoughts and recommendations in the comments below.
This article was first published in August 2015 and was updated in January 2019.
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