Zed Code Editor Making Progress On Linux Support

Back in January the Zed editor was open-sourced for this new code editor from the creators of the Atom editor and Tree-sitter syntax parsing framework. This high performance code editor has been initially focused on macOS support while the Linux support has begun coming together.

A post on the Zed blog this week has provided an update on the ongoing effort to provide native Linux support for this new code editor. The Zed editor has been making progress on Linux but hasn't been straight-forward due to the GPUI framework needing Linux support, various fragmentation issues in the Linux ecosystem, and other technical matters. The initial focus for the Zed developers is on supporting this code editor on Linux under Ubuntu with either X11 or Wayland sessions. Vulkan is being used for the GPU acceleration.

The Zed blog post concludes with:

"So what's left to do for Linux? In order to get to an alpha release: not that much, but don't quote me on that. Essentially: fix 86 remaining todo!s of various difficulty levels, get window resizing/moving to work on Wayland, and implement system dialogues for GPUI. We're close, very close.

After the alpha, we'll need to add support for audio calls, drag & drop, storing of credentials, make sure the performance is consistently high, increase stability, and so on. Take a look at the Linux Roadmap tracking issue.

Even though there might still be a lot to do (I don't even want to know how complicated drag & drop can be on Linux— I mean, GNOM— I mean, KDE, no, I mea—) and a lot of unknown unknowns and surprises along the way, one thing's for sure: the fact that we got to the current state of Zed on Linux in three months, with that many high-quality open-source contributions, is pretty amazing.

Want to try out Zed on Linux? You need Rust, some dependencies, and depending on your patience enough CPU and memory to compile it in a reasonable amount of time. Take a look at these instructions. Have fun!"

It's great seeing Linux support coming together for the Zed code editor.