Comment 19 for bug 156201

I have the exact same problem. From a usability point of view, this editor is practically useless for big files and I wonder why it is the default editor?
The bug should either be fixed or another editor should be set as default in my opinion.
Vim opens the same file in not even a second and LibreOffice includes weird encoding and still is many times faster.

the file I use is 20 Mb, my system has 16 gb of memory and gedit really chokes in it.
Takes MINUTES to open it.
Sublime text takes about a second. too.