whats the best FOSS IDE (and why?)

VS Codium.

It's VS Code, minus the Microsoft bullshit.

Source code is MIT licensed.

I really wish the WSL extension wasn't locked behind VS Code. My workflow is heavily reliant on it which locks me into the proprietary IDE.
- You should be able to setup WSLg then run the Linux Codium in WSL. Regular VS Code will work that way, it just gives a little "hey, you know you could use remote WSL right?" message then keeps chugging.
- when I install codium (with yay, because I use Arch... btw) there is a package that just makes the plugin store the same as Microsoft's. I found one that wasn't working and that was MS pylance, I use pyright now.
- Have you tried manually installing it?
Please stop treating code editors as if they were IDEs.

VS Codium/Code is not an IDE, and it never claimed to be. It's a code editor, like Kate, Vim, Neovim, etc. It only integrates a language server for code editing and some static analysis. It does not integrate a debugger, build system, test system, execution, etc.

IDEs are old school large systems that integrate a code editor, build system, test automation, etc., such as M$ Visual Studio (not Cod(e|ium)), CodeBlocks, Eclipse, JetBrains software suite, etc. They are complete opposition of the UNIX philosophy that the program must do only one thing and do it well.

Besides, when dealing with IDEs, I used to like Eclipse C/C++ and Corrosion IDE because one could easily add link-time dependencies to a project and it generated sophisticated makefiles for you. Besides, if you have a more custom workflow, like auto-generation of source code from a domain-specific language, there's no IDE that can help you. This is the downside of IDEs. Also, nowadays, I found that NeoVim+Coc with Meson build system makes the same thing and even better.
- Can you elaborate? I can do debugging, run code and tests in VS Code.
- Vs code is an IDE change my mind
- It does not integrate a debugger, build system, test system, execution, etc.
  
  All of those things have been available in VSCode and VSCodium as production-ready plugins, supported by major vendors (mostly Microsoft) from almost day one.
  
  Weirdly, as an extreme example, VSCodium with the MSSQL plugin is a better SQL IDE than most dedicated SQL IDEs.
- As far as I'm concerned, as long as the editor alone can handle every step of the process from development to testing to version control to deployment to debugging, it's an IDE.
  
  I don't care if it doesn't natively ship with all these things and you have to append them with plugins. (I thought we championed software that doesn't force bloat features we'll never use down our throats?) The only applicable factors are that it exposes the extensibility to add them, and that someone has added them.
  
  Does that make EMACS and Vim IDEs, too? If you've sufficiently tricked them out with plugins, extensions, and helper scripts to do every part of your pipeline without leaving the editor, then I guess so! It is an Environment that has Integrated everything you need for Development. If it quacks like a duck...
  
  VS Code is an IDE, and I'm tired of pretending it's not.

Obligatory Emacs

It's probably Emacs, but I'm a Neovim user, so I'm going to go with that.

Same here. Emacs is a solid choice, if you wanna get lispy. I just tend to prefer the vim way of things and don't have the time and energy to try learning Emacs again at the moment.
- lispy?

vim

Depends on the language doesn't it?

Unless it's something like an HDL for a proprietary FPGA suite, in my experience, not really, no. Just need a good LSP, Treesitter grammar, and the rest is just QOL. Not having to switch tools is a perk.

Emacs, because it's so configurable that if it isn't the best FOSS IDE it's your own fault for not configuring it right.

In Emacs, you are the IDE
Counter point: Best FOSS IDE is JetBrains. If it's not the best FOSS IDE, it's your own fault for not making it FOSS.

Well nvim, obviously. It's pretty much fully featured. With LSP plugins you get all the code completion, hints, type info, docs and so on. You also get typical navigation like 'go to declaration' and some basic refactoring. And all inside the best editor there is. I'm using it for C, JS, JSX and Rust and all works great. I honestly prefer it to IntelliJ, it loads faster and is more responsive.

no love for jetbrains ides?

FOSS?

Lots of replies mentioning Emacs but Emacs out of the box is gonna be essentially a text editor (insert obligatory: Emacs isn't a text editor; it's a LISP interpreter).

However, install Doom Emacs, and you have a full IDE experience for essentially any language you could ask for. I highly recommend it.

Emacs is a life style
is there a flatpak of this?
- I'm not too familiar with how Flatpak works but Emacs benefits from compiling it on your machine natively. Tell me what distro you're on and I can see if I can find out how you'd do that.
- Following up from my previous comment, there is a Flatpak of Emacs available on Flathub. Here are the instructions for how to install, whilst enabling native compilation, which will offer a performance increase and allow you to use features such as vterm (the best terminal emulator for Emacs).

How about VSCodium? I don't think I should explain why VS Code is best editor.

You might need to explain to me. I've been having so many issues just using vscodium, took me forever to figure out I need to build and compile the code myself and not run it using the play button like Visual Studio in school (I'm a second year comp sci student).
- This is only the case if vscodium is not bundled with your distribution
- Check into the available plugins for your language. VsCodium's architecture pushes everything that not everyone needs into plugins, so unless you're just taking notes, you'll need a plugin for your chosen programming language, and eventually another for your chosen deployment environment (AWS, Azure, etc).
- In vs code there's a run button just like in visual studio. You can also press F5. You will most probably need to install an extension specific to your language so vscode knows what to do when you press F5. For some languages, you'll also have to create a launch.json file manually. launch.json is what describes what the "run" button does.

Neovim all the way, super fast and lends you heavy control.

how does not having a gui work? it's just the terminal right?
- There are multiple gui front ends, but its still very popular to use it in the terminal. Its a TUI, so it practically works like a GUI.

Intellij IDEA Community Edition

Helix. This is the one that could potentially be the successor to vim.

I could never be a successor to vim. However micro is a pretty good editor.
I love helix, I just wish the development was a bit faster. The main developers are all quite busy and I would love nothing more for them to be able to use some of the open collective money to pay themselves to work on it full time for a bit. I think in a year or two it will be amazing.
- I love helix
  
  Woah woah, not so fast.
  
  Love you too

micro + makefiles. It's very very fast.

VSCodium is OK aswell, has lots of extensions, but a bit slow. I can work with it way better than with IntelliJ products though.

Makefile club for life.

ed

?

I used to like MonoDevelop maybe 10 years ago, but it's not around any more. If I remember correctly, it was the only open-source IDE that supported C# and ran on Linux. That was before C# and .NET were open-source and Mono was the only way to run C# apps on Linux. Things are way different now.

The best today is obviously nano. It has syntax highlighting, auto-indentation, and at some point they made it so Ctrl+S saves the file. What more do you need? (cut and paste still use weird shortcuts though)

micro > nano