VSCodium

VSCodium compiles Microsoft's Visual Studio Code from its MIT-licensed source repository and ships the result without the telemetry, tracking and branding that Microsoft adds to its own binaries. The editor itself is the same program: the same interface and keybindings, the same settings file, the same integrated terminal, debugger and Git support.

The difference that matters in daily use is the extension marketplace. Microsoft's marketplace is licensed for its own builds only, so VSCodium points at the Open VSX registry instead. Most widely used extensions are published there, but not all of them, and several Microsoft-authored extensions cannot be installed at all. When something is missing from the registry it can still be sideloaded from a VSIX file.

Builds for Linux, Windows and macOS are produced by the VSCodium project rather than by Microsoft. Settings and extension directories use their own paths, so VSCodium can sit side by side with an existing Visual Studio Code installation.