[HN Gopher] HeidiSQL Available Also for Linux
___________________________________________________________________
HeidiSQL Available Also for Linux
Author : Daril
Score : 148 points
Date : 2025-05-29 13:16 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.heidisql.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.heidisql.com)
| Daril wrote:
| HeidiSQL is free software for people who work with databases, and
| aims to be intuitive to use. "Heidi" lets you connect to a
| variety of databases, like MariaDB, MySQL, Microsoft SQL,
| PostgreSQL, SQLite, Interbase and Firebird.
|
| Since some days it is finally available in a native Linux
| version. The code has been ported from Delphi to FreePascal /
| Lazarus.
| atmanactive wrote:
| Congrats on this. IMHO HeidiSQL is the best desktop SQL tool out
| there. Keep up the good work!
| moron4hire wrote:
| I'm curious if anyone here has any experience with DbBeaver and
| HeidiSQL and can make a comparison. I've been using DbBeaver for
| a while, but the interface is... strange. Will probably try Heidi
| tomorrow.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| I've used both; DBeaver for personal stuff, Heidi at work.
| Heidi has a much more intuitive interface, IMHO
| cookiengineer wrote:
| I've been using HeidiSQL since around 2008(?) at my first job.
| What I like the most about Heidi is the UI for generating
| queries and editing left/right joins in a graphical manner. So
| you can use it to "prototype" your queries first, try them out,
| see the results, and then copy/paste them into your code, which
| is a supernice experience, including for beginners that haven't
| had much experience with SQL databases and lack the "feeling"
| of how to decouple datasets into tables.
|
| I was trying out DBeaver a lot, actually, but a couple of
| things here and there didn't work as expected. Sometimes I had
| problems with batch selections that I couldn't reproduce so I
| was then most of the time switching back to HeidiSQL in my wine
| sandbox when it didn't work, out of frustration.
|
| To me it's really great to see Heidi getting revived into a
| community software again, I really missed the tool a lot since
| I've made the switch to Linux as my daily driver everywhere.
| Wine's double click seemless windows aren't really nice and
| sometimes really annoying.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| When I switched to Linux full time, I had to ditch Heidi as
| they didn't have a Linux version. I actually prefer dbeaver
| now, Heidi had some odd defaults (default collation especially)
| which need attention but you don't realise it until too late.
| It also was a bit crashy here and there.
|
| DBeaver has the worst name in history but it can do everything
| Heidi does and doesn't fall over every 20 minutes. The buttons
| are all over the place and it's harder to navigate than Heidi
| but it's also standard on a few distros.
|
| I'm glad it has some competition though. If you're working with
| sql server Microsoft have really dropped the ball with SSMS and
| don't talk to me about azure data studio it is a undergraduate
| project that got a C.
|
| I was switching a lot between SQLite, pawl, Marian and sql
| server and dbeaver is excellent on all of them
| Aeolun wrote:
| I feel like dbeaver _works_ with all of them. It never feels
| like a pleasure to use, unlike Heidi, which actively feels
| like it makes working with databases nicer.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| I've found Dbeaver struggles with large tables or databases
| with a lot of tables, often going out of memory unless I
| click the GC button every 10 seconds.
|
| Meanwhile Heidi is fine.
| ipdashc wrote:
| > DBeaver has the worst name in history
|
| Hey man. You take that back.
| quercusa wrote:
| GIMP would like a word...
| 0points wrote:
| Yeah, DbBeaver is a slow behemoth while HeidiSQL is like 2 MB
| snappy lean and mean exe.
|
| Works great in Wine before this native version came about.
| letters90 wrote:
| With DBeaver I was able to use tnsnames.ora to use a few tricks
| to connect to an oracle db
|
| It required certain host/user/cid combination to pass the
| whitelist.
| hello_computer wrote:
| For me, DbBeaver is jack-of-all-trades, master of none. Seems
| to handle every database known to mankind, but not a fantastic
| user experience. While HeidiSQL is a work of art for MySQL /
| MariaDB, but not much else. I use & appreciate both in
| different ways.
| mappu wrote:
| Heidi is the best, this is really wonderful. I had been using
| MeowSQL as an imitation client which was fine, but having the
| real HeidiSQL again is such a nice feeling.
|
| The deb package here didn't run for me on Debian 12 nor under
| distrobox Ubuntu, i think the dependency list needs a little
| attention, but that can be easily solved.
| sakesun wrote:
| HeidiSQL, CudaText, Double Commander -- these native Pascal Apps
| still give the best user experience for me after decades.
| Daril wrote:
| There is also Peazip : https://github.com/peazip/PeaZip
| CliffyA wrote:
| Great news!
|
| I've missed Heidi after changing job and moving from MySQL to
| Mongo and then Linux many (many) years ago. Looking forward to
| see how it goes with Postgres and SQLite nowadays.
| sandreas wrote:
| Thanks for Posting. I love to see Pascal Cross Platform Apps are
| possible.
|
| How does this compare with DbGate
| (https://github.com/dbgate/dbgate)?
| mohas wrote:
| Heidi is one of the apps that I like so much it locked me to
| using windows
| redditor98654 wrote:
| If you have the license for it, it is hard to beat Datagrip from
| Jetbrains. Support for just about any database and also
| integrated support for AI/Copilot making it much easier to write
| exploratory queries.
| osener wrote:
| For simpler use-cases I've used both https://dataflare.app/ and
| https://tableplus.com/ with success. They are much quicker and
| lighter to start-up, browse some tables and run some queries.
|
| Free versions are generous enough for daily use as well. For
| example for TablePlus "The free trial is limited to 2 opened
| tabs, 2 opened windows, 2 advanced filters (filters are not
| available on the free TablePlus Windows) at a time."
| cies wrote:
| DBeaver is free, quite full featured (no AI) and FLOSS.
| rsyring wrote:
| But has a very complex and busy UI that, for whatever
| reason, makes it difficult/tiring for me to use.
|
| Very emblematic of it's Java GUI roots.
| cies wrote:
| Yeah. Some tools are used by many for a long time and get
| lots of features in the process...
|
| And some tools dont...
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| You can turn off most of them.
| eknkc wrote:
| I love TablePlus. I basically use it for everything at this
| point even though I have a JetBrains all prod license. Never
| liked DataGrip.
| schaum wrote:
| I used Datagrip like 10 years ago and it was amazing, back then
| I used some pre-release evaluation thingy, loved it, was only
| working with mysql though.
|
| last year i looked at it again, in a project where mongodb is
| used, it did not perform so well, sure the features where
| there, but still mongodb is document orientated so i had to
| come up with workarounds and so ... yeah back to cli
| unfortunately
|
| but for any relational database, I'd rather use datagrip!
| wiether wrote:
| I suppose it has more advanced features than IntelliJ?
|
| Because when I switched to MacOS I had to find a replacement
| for HeidiSQL and, to my surprise, I was able to do everything I
| wanted to directly from IntelliJ, which was already my main
| IDE.
|
| https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/database-tool-window.htm...
| redditor98654 wrote:
| I use the dedicated app but IntelliJ ultimate bundles
| datagrip into the ide too.
| deergomoo wrote:
| Heidi was the default option on our work machines a few years ago
| and it's one of the buggiest pieces of software I've ever used.
|
| Does it still lock up the entire UI if a query takes longer than
| five seconds to return results? Does it still pop up exception
| dialogs every ten minutes when it's been open for longer than a
| few hours?
| cies wrote:
| Using DBeaver and its also not without problems. Lots of popup
| dialogs that we cannot stop. But ti does not constantly crash
| or lock up.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| This is my exact experience with DBeaver. Absolutely cannot
| stop all the frustrating popups. Finally got fed up and
| started using vim+dadbod and while the experience is a bit
| less batteries-included, I was mostly just using DBeaver to
| run raw SQL anyway, and have been on vim for over a decade so
| that's an option for me. Now my SQL queries live in per-
| project versioned files instead of some eclipse project
| folder somewhere and I can edit them with all the power of
| vim which speeds up my workflows.
|
| But nobody's going to do this without being a huge vim nerd,
| so I recognize it's not a general alternative.
| creamyhorror wrote:
| HeidiSQL has its quirks and occasional rough edges, but it's
| certainly simpler and more straightforward to use than DBeaver,
| the other common free SQL client that is sometimes recommended.
|
| I prefer Heidi where the DB setup allows it, and use DBeaver as
| a backup.
| preezer wrote:
| Very, very cool.
| devgoncalo wrote:
| Great news. For me HeidiSQL has been one of my daily dev tools
| (since 2012?). I don't find it buggy, it's really fast and does
| the job really well.
| igitur wrote:
| Long time user of HeidiSQL here. I respect the author a lot. He's
| been tirelessly working on this project for many years, mostly
| alone. Of course, that's due to the closed nature of Delphi.
|
| It's great news that this is now available for Linux, but the
| better news for me is that I can now build it on Lazarus /
| FreePascal. Even if it doesn't support all the features (eg
| MSSQL), at least I can now contribute fixes for some UI issues
| that have been bothering me.
|
| I can successfully build the FreePascal version on Windows and it
| runs... fine. Feels a little less snappy than the Delphi version
| and there are some UI padding issues. But it's a massive step in
| the right direction.
|
| If you can, please support this project, either financially or
| through code. contributions. IHMO what is dearly needed is for
| the different SQL dialects to be abstracted out properly. It's
| currently done in a bit of a crude way (no disrespect to the
| author) and it will require a big refactoring to get it right,
| but will open doors to more dialects.
| Daril wrote:
| Very good news that the Freepascal version compiles and works
| correctly also on Windows. As you said, Delphi was a huge
| barrier to prevent other developers to contribute, but if we
| can use Lazarus, Heidi can receive a lot of help not only for
| Linux version but also for Windows one. Probably, thanks to
| Freepascal / Lazarus, it can be ported easily also to Mac OS
| now.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > easily
|
| Depending on how OS-independent it is, it might just be a
| matter of opening the project file and selecting Run -> Build
| (yes, the fact that Build is under Run is something that
| always bothered me, but it has been like that for 22+ years
| now). However the resulting app will be very "win-like" and
| when i was making macOS builds using Lazarus back when i
| cared about macOS i always had a "Macize" function i called
| at startup (ifdef'd for mac builds) that did things like
| replace the Ctrl modifier shortcuts with Command in menus
| (you can enumerate the menus, no need to do that by hand),
| move the About command to the apple menu, etc. There are also
| some other things that you may feel like doing.
|
| TBH one thing that i wish was possible with Lazarus (at the
| time, now i don't care much :-P) was to be able to define
| different "layouts" per widgetset in a way that allowed you
| to use, say, a 'default' layout for Windows and Linux but a
| modified layout for macOS. Technically it is possible to
| design a form and then have another form inherit from it and
| apply modifications there, but it feels kinda awkward to use
| for different layouts (it is mainly meant for creating forms
| that you want to reuse but still have modifications - and it
| can be clunky in how it decides when to ignore changes in the
| base form or not - i do not use visual form inheritance, but
| i do use frames to design reusable controls visually and i
| often have to edit the source code of form files that use
| frames to remove overrides after saving the form so that
| changes to the frame are reflected in all forms that use it -
| this makes me want to add a readonly property to frames at
| some point :-P).
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Since Linux version works, I wonder if it could work on Mac,
| too?
| Zekio wrote:
| HeidiSQL really brings me to back old school private servers for
| various games
| racl101 wrote:
| Pretty great program for Windows.
| rd07 wrote:
| I have wanted to try HeidiSQL before, but the lack of Linux
| version stopped me. Now, that it releases a Linux version, I
| think it is time to try it. Currently, I am using DbGate (daily)
| and DBeaver (occasionally). Feature-wise, DBeaver is better than
| DbGate, but it is slower than DbGate. Now let's see if Heidi is
| better than those two.
| Shorel wrote:
| This is one of those programs that are so good and feature-rich
| that, even though I use Linux full time, I installed Wine to use
| the Windows version.
|
| No other Linux program has anywhere near half the features of
| HeidiSQL. Saying this is great news is an understatement.
| dhfbfb wrote:
| I only ever used DBeaver, because that seemed like the best
| free option for Linux to manage several SQL and NoSQL
| databases. What does Heidi offer that makes it better?
| spapas82 wrote:
| Heidi is the best gui for mysql/mariadb. It's really great and I
| don't change it with anything when i need to work on mysql
| servers.
|
| Unfortunately it's not that good on postgres or ms sql server.
| Feels more buggy and slow for these databases but I'm not sure if
| it's Heidi or the db drivers.
|
| I'm also one of the people that used heidi on Linux with wine
| (along with notepad++) so a native version is more than welcome!
| Grazester wrote:
| I use Heidi SQL daily but then again if I had to do anything
| major I would return to MS SQL management studio. Heidi can be
| buggy at times.
| rorylaitila wrote:
| I like how snappy and easy HeidiSQL is, I still use it when I
| need to manually twiddle some bit. But it's buggy and I don't
| write any SQL in it as I've lost enough code mid writing. DBeaver
| is my daily driver now.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-06-02 23:01 UTC)