In search of a good and customisable IDE, Is eclipse is the ultimate one?

Question

I am using GNU/Linux (Ubuntu + Gnome).

I have been using netbeans on windows since a long time and on Linux I prefer to use vi or emacs.

Now my problem is I want to totally migrate into Linux for all my development works but i have seen that netbeans do not has that appealing look as it used to have on windows. Same with eclipse. I know looks doesnot matters but when i look at native Linux apps like kedit, geany IDE they have a sturdy and a good look.. i guess nobody has made such a comment on IDEs but i feels looks also matters.. :)

I have used vi for editing configuration files and writing small programs but when it comes to writing a big project then i guess vi is not that effective (I have no idea how much vi plugins are effective.)

Now there are several options for selecting an IDE but i want to use one on which i can depend on for a long run (if i try each and every IDE on this earth then when will i write my code).

Out of all IDEs and Text Editors i have ever used, i liked kate a lot.. is it possible to customize kate to have feature an IDE has.. like version control support, code completion, a proper project explorer window on the left hand side. I have seen a Latex IDE "kile" which has integrated kate into it.. does any IDE exists with kate integrated into it? is it possible to have vi key binding support on kate..

Or should i keep all this stuff apart and use eclipse instead (for me it seems to be quite difficult to use as compared to netbeans but will it work well for editing files of different languages at once like html files, css files, js files, xml files and some python code.. and worth learning "how to use eclipse")?

I work on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, PHP(not that often), XUL(An XML for Firefox GUI), bash scripting. As you can see that i am extremely with IDE selection, please suggest me some thing (an IDE or text editor with enough tweaks) so that I can use it for all different languages/files i use at once with code completion and syntax highlighting features.

Answer 1

Try KDevelop: http://www.kdevelop.org/

Answer 2

Although I have only used Eclipse on Windows and Solaris, I have never noticed any differences in looks, and definitely not in functionality. Friends who've used it on various linux builds (admittedly mostly Ubuntu) also seems to have the same GUI as I do - at least from what I can discern from looking over their shoulders :P

But from my experience, Eclipse is more than enough for handling all web client code ((x)html, css, javascript...), some web server code (mainly php, but I would assume both jsp and python scripted pages work as well), as well as several desktop/script languages (I've happily used Eclipse for both Java and python development - python requires a free plugin, but works as a charm).

You get syntax highlighting, code completion (a.k.a. intellisense), build and debug functionality, project explorer, probably version control - if not built-in, then I'm sure there are plugins for it, packaging and publishing options...

In short, I think Eclipse is a great tool for developing in all the languages you mentioned.

Answer 3

I really like JetBrain's IDEs. They're plugin-based and they have a version for HTML/js/css, python, PHP, and of course Java. And there's lots of plugins available.