Microsoft is getting rid of WordPad after 28 years – the veteran editor has been present in the OS since Windows 95::Microsoft has begun getting rid of another veteran application in its proprietary operating system. The company has released a new test build of Windows 11
LibreOffice is a good solution for anything one would use Office or WordPad for. Works on Windows, Linux, and MacOS.
Libre Office is a good replacement for Office/Word, but it is much heavier than WordPad.
It even feels heavier than Office on windows (on linux it feels much better).
Likely feels that way because it has to load the Java runtime before launching.
I believe, it only loads a Java runtime for the JDBC database driver in LibreOffice Base. At least, you can tell it in the settings to not use a Java runtime and that seems to not affect the remaining functionality…
Tbh I don’t use Windows or libre office so I’m just guessing. Back in the day I just know it took what felt like forever to load initially (and my pc fans took flight each time) but so did MS office 🤷
It even feels heavier than Office on windows (on linux it feels much better).
LibreOffice is also available as a Flatpak:
Outside of that. And keeping in mind WordPad was a standalone rich text editor:
Kate is pretty swell too:
Or slim down to Kwrite:
I myself am also mostly writing in
markdownon Obsidian:Markdown has definitely replaced most of what I used wordpad for. Obsidian is nice, but I’ll also write markdown in vscode or even just vim. It all works and even when it’s not interpreted, it still looks readable. Plus since it’s all just text, easily converted, and widely supported, I don’t have to worry about format deprecation.
Are these available in Windows?
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Notepad++ 👍
Notepad++, is not really meant to be a replacement to WordPad.
Seems kinda sad. I doubt it’s a program many people use (or even know of) these days, but there is an odd charm to super simple rich text editors like WordPad and TextEdit in macOS.
I suppose AbiWord sorta fills that niche as a replacement.
Anyone remember Microsoft Office’s weird cousin, Works?
Forgot Works ever existed! That takes me back. So glad they killed that mess.
Haha I never understood why they had two office suites.
It was “Write” before Win95.
WordPad was in that weird area between Notepad and Word (oh I get it, WordPad). I nevel felt like there was much use for it.
For all intents and purposes it was free word
I haven’t really used word in over half a decade since TeX beats it in every conceivable way.
Wordpad was useful in the sparse few cases where I was forced to open a .doc or .docx and couldn’t be arsed to upload the file to Google docs
I guess it will be missed for that
Reject modern GUI text editors, embrace Vim
I’ve been using for the last 2 years becuase I don’t know how to exit it.
Hopefully you find a way out…please let me know if you have found a way out.
:wq The sacred knowledge
I legitimately loled, we’ve all been there.
Doom emacs is superior
Emacs is a fine operating system, lacking only a good text editor.
Edit: For the record, I code in emacs every day at work. (Please send help.)
Oh I definitely agree - and highly recommend checking out doom emacs to solve that. It’s emacs configured to use vim keybinds instead (and other QOL features). It adds a bit less than 200 add-ons by default, but they’re only loaded as needed so startup time is still <1 second
Eh, I’ve got so many keybindings and scripts and changes already and I actually quite like my setup. Not looking to learn vim keybindings beyond the ones I know (essentially how to close vim 😁).
If these fuckers touch notepad I’ll riot.
Actually that’s not true, I’ll just be quietly annoyed.
They already did. They added tabs to it, which honestly was a pleasant surprise but loooooong overdue. Apps like Notepad++ had stolen the reason for Notepad to exist long ago.
So the next Windows won’t come with any text editor unless you pay extra for Word?
It’ll have notepad
Notepad with AI, so you can continue to not use Notepad, but with AI.
I just use libreoffice or vim for general text stuff I haven’t used WordPad in 28 years. Was it ever able to edit Ms word documents? I feel like there was a reason I didn’t use it.
Believe it dealt in rich text format rtf by default, think it was too limited for docx but I’m open to being corrected
AbiWord was probably the closest as a FLOSS equivalent?
Didn’t Windows for Workgroups (3.12) also have WordPad? I remember something that was more complex than Notepad being released with pre-95 Windows.
3.11 (not 3.12, which was never a thing) apparently came with Microsoft Write.
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Microsoft Write is a basic word processor included with Windows 1. 0 and later, until Windows NT 3. 51. Throughout its lifespan it was minimally updated, and is comparable to early versions of MacWrite. Early versions of Write only work with Write Document (.
Markdown is superior anyway 😂
Is wordpad, notepad?
