Gedit is the basic editor that is included in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. Its functionality can be extended with plugins as explained in the post below. I installed the plugin initially because it allows one to comment or un-comment selected lines of text. I find this useful when I want to include two configuration blocks in a script, say one for a local installation of a program and another for a remote installation on a cluster. If you do this, just make sure the appropriate blocks are commented and un-commented when you run the script.