How to Install Mousepad in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04?

Mousepad is the default text editor that comes with the Xfce desktop environment. In my humble opinion, if you use Gnome then you should only install it if you want a more simplified, hassle-free text editing environment because to be honest, Mousepad does not allow the users to do a lot of customizations and doesn't have that many features either (well I guess it's kinda its purpose since Xfce is meant to be light-weight).

But if you're searching for a simple, fast loading text editor then Mousepad is pretty decent app. It's actually based on another text editor called Leafpad (which is the LXDE desktop's text editor) but again it's even more simplified than the Leafpad it self, personally I prefer Leafpad over Mousepad.

Main features...

*. Although slightly slower than the Leafpad but loads faster than Gedit for instance.

*. Save text files in different formats.

*. Print preview.

*. Undo/Redo.

*. Change font/size.

*. Word-Wrap.

*. Find and replace text.

*. Show/Hide line numbers.

*. Auto indent.

It doesn't even has an "options" window which usually lets you configure few things such as tool-bars or customize other features but it certainly is not a game changer :). But if you're a serious writer then this is not something that I think you'd be quite happy with either.

You can install Mousepad in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install mousepad

That should do it.