What's the difference between Vim/Emacs? Do they do they same thing? New to Linux and can't decide which to use!

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on /r/emacs

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  • org-roam

    Rudimentary Roam replica with Org-mode

    First of all, it is focused on Vim keybindings which seemingly most people prefer over Emacs keybindings (because Vim is a far more popular editor despite Emacs being the more general, more fun and more powerful editor, easier to configure with the better extension language). However, I strongly suspect that most of those Vim users are not aware that the Evil package actually provides a better Vim than Vim itself (as this is very poorly advertised, e.g. try to find this info in any editor comparison/poll website. Really, Spacemacs is very much 'under advertised' but despite that, you'll find that it still ranks among the top five editors on e.g. slant.co. I guess another reason for Vim's unjustified much higher popularity is the difference in startup time, but believe me, those few seconds are very much worth waiting for, and b.t.w. after starting up once, you will never have to close Spacemacs again, well almost). But you can also try both type of keybindings and decide for yourself, by doing the Emacs tutorial for 5 mins, and then do the vim tutorial for 5 mins. But besides that, Emacs is the most enjoyable editor. It has amazing introspection/self-documenting features, also it provides beautiful packages like org-mode and magit (and org-roam is gaining popularity also) and it provides edebug that is another great tool for inspecting/discovering the editor.

  • VSpaceCode

    Spacemacs like keybindings for Visual Studio Code

    Then Spacemacs is probably the most nicely configured editor in existence. It improves over Vim by making the SPC the central leader key, and adding highly intuitive mnemonic keybindings. Really, check out Spacemacs for 5 minutes, and I guess you will understand the beautiful concept and using it you will have the power of Emacs and Vim combined (and improved on) in one. You should not just take my words without checking them, but I can tell you that I have checked out the various 'Spacemacs imitations', spacevim, vspacecode, atom with which-key, but they all pale by comparison to Spacemacs (Doom emacs is a good competitor but personally I prefer Spacemacs and definitely I would recommend it over Doom for beginners).

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    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  • SpaceVim

    Discontinued A community-driven modular vim/neovim distribution - The ultimate vimrc

    Then Spacemacs is probably the most nicely configured editor in existence. It improves over Vim by making the SPC the central leader key, and adding highly intuitive mnemonic keybindings. Really, check out Spacemacs for 5 minutes, and I guess you will understand the beautiful concept and using it you will have the power of Emacs and Vim combined (and improved on) in one. You should not just take my words without checking them, but I can tell you that I have checked out the various 'Spacemacs imitations', spacevim, vspacecode, atom with which-key, but they all pale by comparison to Spacemacs (Doom emacs is a good competitor but personally I prefer Spacemacs and definitely I would recommend it over Doom for beginners).

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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