I've been waiting for the Zed editor to release their Linux port for a long time now, ever since it was released. But as soon as it did, I wasn't impressed, but neither was i disappointed. Here are my thoughts...

Rather than being written in Javascript like VSCode, Zed offers better speeds, along with other benefits provided by the Rust language. Being a recent Rust fanatic myself, I appreciate it very much.

Whenever I open Zed project on my computer, it lags by a few seconds. Sure, but once it's open, it's as smooth as butter. However that is not the case with Neovim since it uses the terminal emulator as a base.

Sure, there are plenty of extensions out there, but the extensions marketplace doesn't really have as many extensions as something like Jetbrains or Neovim, given that they took ages to release the Linux port, I expected more. If this is the case, they should eliminate the marketplace feature fully and adopt a similar config system like neovim's for installing plugins.

Zed supports many languages out of the box, including syntax highlighting and auto complete. This is however, a trade-off because the user needs to tinker a lot to remove support for languages that are not needed. This is also NOT the case with VSCode, where you install the extension (LSP, Formatters,Linters, etc) of the language only when you need it.

Currently Zed editor supports native packages for only a few Linux distros like NixOS. Even for Arch, i believe it's only through the Arch wiki. Otherwise you may need to depend on curling an install script.

I personally tend to stay away from these AI coding assistants because they collect usage data, need API keys, or just ruin your ability to code overtime with the habit of reliance.

I feel that I might stay on the Neovim side longer as my config offers more than the Zed editor provides to my workflow. I know it is all about personal choices. I acknowledge that these were all purely my opinions on the topic (feel free to roast me if you're a Zed fanboy). There's just nothing on Zed currently that might attract me to make the switch, even with Ai code completion (which can be easily implemented in any mainstream editor nowadays). Zed needs to pack more of a punch.