I installed the beta a week or two ago. Many of the files I tried opening in it just did not work at all. It can only open utf-8 encoded files.
That is not a problem for code, but if you just want to open some random .txt file or .csv file, these are often enough not utf-8 encoded, especially if they contain non English text.
The github issue for this is showing progress, but I think it's a mistake to promote the editor to stable as is.
Have they implemented subpixel font rendering by now? I remember that being a sticking point when it came to Linux because they had designed their custom UI renderer around the Macs ubiquitous HiDPI displays, leading to blurry fonts for the much, much larger proportion of Linux (and Windows) users who still use LoDPI displays.
I installed Zed and tested out a bunch of fonts on my 1440p monitor. It looks decent, but not great. I think that's more a byproduct of Windows' awful font rendering in general though moreso than a Zed specific problem. VSCode is no better.
Seems like the only way to get high quality font rendering these days is a 4k+ display.
I tried it for a bit. But unless you want to use their choice of lsp/linter/whatever from what you are used to, then you will waste even more time customising zed to your needs from your previous solution.
[Window Title]
Critical
[Main Instruction]
Unsupported GPU
[Content]
Zed uses DirectX for rendering and requires a compatible GPU.
Currently you are using a software emulated GPU (Microsoft Basic Render Driver) which
will result in awful performance.
For troubleshooting see: https://zed.dev/docs/windows
Set ZED_ALLOW_EMULATED_GPU=1 env var to permanently override.
[Skip] [Troubleshoot and Quit]
Is this something like Sublime? Light/responsive editor for one-off files? But maybe with some better introspection? That would fill a niche for me; trying it. FYI download+install is the smoothest experience of any software I've loaded recently I didn't build myself. Going to daily-drive it for a bit and see what's up; promising!
I watched the video on the home page and thought it is weird that they spend an inordinate amount of time on frame rate. Who picks an editor based on frame rate?
If you want to talk about perf in the context of a text editor show me how big of a file you can load--especially if the file has no line breaks. Emacs has trouble here. If you load a minified js file it slows to a crawl especially if syntax highlighting is on. Also show me how fast the start up time is. This is another area where Emacs does not do well.
So Zed is available on Windows--but only if you have a x64 processor. Lots of people run Windows on Arm64 and I don't see any mention of Arm64. This is where the puck is heading.
Unfortunately, I tried to use zed as my daily driver, but the typescript experience was subpar. While the editor itself was snappy, LSP actions like "jump to declaration" were incredibly slow on our codebase compared to VS Code / Cursor.
I had the same experience and the same outcome. Zed was super fast for editing but slow for rich features, which on the net slowed me down compared with VSCode
First, you should fix fundamental operations on Mac and other distributions - for example when you stash or perform operations on files from other tools, it will put the state out of sync.
You can build the most beautiful and fastest IDE, but with this bugs, it’s useless
I don't use windows, but this is good development as all platforms should be present for editors to be worth using. I am happy Zed user since long time, I am happy it had kept with out demands, with adding AI, Git etc.
Also integration of cli tools into AI is excellent and really refreshing.
Zed looks and feels amazing to use. I test-drove it for a bit on my linux system, and the feel of it is difficult to convey to those who have not tried it yet. It's easy to overlook the significance of gpu accelerated editor - but I promise you, use it for a bit and you'll be sold.
The only feature that is preventing me from switching to Zed is the current lack of DevContainer support[1]. After investing a significant amount of time perfecting a devcontainer (custom fat image with all tools/libs + config), it would be a large step backwards to go back to installing everything locally.
There's a lot of eyes on this feature, so I'm hopeful it will be implemented in the future.
One of the reasons why I'm not fully switching yet is a Zed's inability to update the currently open file with changes made elsewhere [1].
All the other editors I use are aware of outside changes, but not Zed. And I'm just not willing to close and reopen the file to get fresh contents. Eventually, I'll forget to do it and lose some work.
I tried it for a while. It's okay, I guess. Typing latency is neither an issue nor a bottleneck for me, so personally, I don't see the appeal. Apart from that, it feels lacking and offers nothing else that I don't already get from VS Code. If I really cared about performance, I would use Neovim.
I write C++ and Typescript and just tried Zed on Windows, it didn't feel significantly faster for me (maybe a bit).
What's worse is C++ autocomplete - both on the same project with clang and CMake - it might be that I need some more setup, but I felt like Zed understood much less of tricky modern C++ (tbf, VS Code isn't perfect either) and the autocomplete was kinda broken. I fully admit this might be due to my own inexperience, so I won't hold it against Zed, but so far I haven't seen anything significantly better to justify making the switch.
I also really like dev containers in vscode. Wondering if you've looked into using something like fedora silver blue and it's "toolbox" system to do the dev container business at that level.
I agree from a company perspective using dev containers gets all devs on the same page
Just wanted to mention that some basic Windows-OS keyboard shortcuts don't work, like ALT+F to open the File menu. Also things like ALT+SPACEBAR to bring up the system context menu for the focussed window (the menu with maximise, minimise, close options etc.) do not seem to work. I'm guessing with the DirectX rendering backend, the 'app' is rendered more akin to a video game than a native win32 process.
Also after install, the install directory takes up 400MB+. Even VSCode only takes up around 380MB. I believe it when they say it's not an Electron app, but I do wonder what's being packed in there. I was always under the impresion that Rust apps are pretty lightweight, but that install size is nearing Java levels of binary/dependency bloat.
> I was always under the impresion that Rust apps are pretty lightweight
Maybe compared to electron, but binary size is an issue with any nontrivial rust application. Due to how cargo works, it compiles and bundles in every dependency in world.
> I believe it when they say it's not an Electron app, but I do wonder what's being packed in there
Half of Electron namely Node.js. As majority of lsp are .js based. Also extensions are WASM. Also VS Code keeps extensions in separate config directory, while Zed in main directory.
I switched from VSCode to Zed as my "I just need to edit this 1 little text file" app because VSCode was way too spammy. Every time I open it it wants to update something or complain about some extensions or complain that I had a file open and now it MUST close it because heaven forbid I open two things at once.
I hope Zed stays clean. We'll see. So far so good. Was quite happy they had a JetBrains base hotkey setup. Had to add a few of my own but I could pretty easily, nothing missing so far.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 72.1 ms ] threadSounds great. Looking forward to doing a simple test run with Astro SSG
I'm really liking it thus far!
That is not a problem for code, but if you just want to open some random .txt file or .csv file, these are often enough not utf-8 encoded, especially if they contain non English text.
The github issue for this is showing progress, but I think it's a mistake to promote the editor to stable as is.
Seems like the only way to get high quality font rendering these days is a 4k+ display.
I love my ARM Surface Pro, and Zed would make a wonderful editor on this hardware. If anyone from Zed is reading this, please think about it!
If you want to talk about perf in the context of a text editor show me how big of a file you can load--especially if the file has no line breaks. Emacs has trouble here. If you load a minified js file it slows to a crawl especially if syntax highlighting is on. Also show me how fast the start up time is. This is another area where Emacs does not do well.
So Zed is available on Windows--but only if you have a x64 processor. Lots of people run Windows on Arm64 and I don't see any mention of Arm64. This is where the puck is heading.
Also noticed Emacs key binding is in beta still.
You can build the most beautiful and fastest IDE, but with this bugs, it’s useless
I'd like to properly give it a go one day due to the effort put into its vim keybindings, but until then I'll stick to neovim.
The only feature that is preventing me from switching to Zed is the current lack of DevContainer support[1]. After investing a significant amount of time perfecting a devcontainer (custom fat image with all tools/libs + config), it would be a large step backwards to go back to installing everything locally.
There's a lot of eyes on this feature, so I'm hopeful it will be implemented in the future.
[1] https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/11473
All the other editors I use are aware of outside changes, but not Zed. And I'm just not willing to close and reopen the file to get fresh contents. Eventually, I'll forget to do it and lose some work.
[1] https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/15791
What's worse is C++ autocomplete - both on the same project with clang and CMake - it might be that I need some more setup, but I felt like Zed understood much less of tricky modern C++ (tbf, VS Code isn't perfect either) and the autocomplete was kinda broken. I fully admit this might be due to my own inexperience, so I won't hold it against Zed, but so far I haven't seen anything significantly better to justify making the switch.
I agree from a company perspective using dev containers gets all devs on the same page
Also after install, the install directory takes up 400MB+. Even VSCode only takes up around 380MB. I believe it when they say it's not an Electron app, but I do wonder what's being packed in there. I was always under the impresion that Rust apps are pretty lightweight, but that install size is nearing Java levels of binary/dependency bloat.
This needs to be justified asap to help people understand and reconsider installing it.
Maybe compared to electron, but binary size is an issue with any nontrivial rust application. Due to how cargo works, it compiles and bundles in every dependency in world.
400MB is unnecessarily large though.
Half of Electron namely Node.js. As majority of lsp are .js based. Also extensions are WASM. Also VS Code keeps extensions in separate config directory, while Zed in main directory.
400 mb for new project in this amazing bestest compiled language ever made is ridiculous.
For what it's worth, the zed executable on Linux weighs 3.2 MB.
EDIT: Sorry, the nix store is too good at hiding things from me. It's actually around 337 MB plus webrtc-sys.
I'm not sure what gave you that impression. I'd say Rust is pretty well known for fat binaries
RAM:
213 MB Zed
41 MB ST
Storage:
406 MB Zed
52 MB ST
Startup time:
Zed is slower than ST (but only by a few milliseconds).
Also when you reopen ST it will remember how you've resized the window from last time whereas Zed won't.
i can’t describe it in any other way other than it feels cold to use
i wonder if anyone else felt the same in earlier versions and feels that it’s fixed
Okay, I may ocassionally do some code editing on it. But most of the time it's gotta be VSCode or vim/nvim.
I hope Zed stays clean. We'll see. So far so good. Was quite happy they had a JetBrains base hotkey setup. Had to add a few of my own but I could pretty easily, nothing missing so far.