throwawayish

It’s unfortunate that nothing really has Kakoune bindings other than Kakoune.

That's indeed very unfortunate...

And after you type the ‘2w’, the selection shows what you’re about to delete, because it’s a separate command.

That genuinely seems like very useful functionality. Thanks for pointing that out!

Sure, you can use visual mode in vim but it feels like an afterthought in a lot of ways.

Could you perhaps give some examples so that I can better understand/grasp why you feel that's the case?

Those two are I think the main reasons I like Kakoune.

I haven’t really had problems with it, at least. Maybe because I’ve used vim for a long time before Kakoune. TBH I also don’t really use vim a lot anymore except on one remote machine that isn’t mine.

I am very grateful to you for sharing your experiences as a long time Vim user that currently prefers Kakoune over it. It has definitely impressed me and made me a lot more curious towards it. And I genuinely feel like I should think this over properly before I rashly commit to Vi(m). Thank you for raising such awareness!

I’m a bit surprised that no-one mentioned ALE. If you want to turn vim into an IDE it goes a long way.

That's very useful! Thank you for mentioning that!

I’ve recently developed a Java program entirely in vim using Eclipse’s LSP.

Very interesting! I'd assume one would have to be relatively fluent in Vimscript to pull that off. Would you mind sharing your thoughts regarding Vimscript? I especially feel the need to ask as a lot of other users so far have been championing Neovim with some of them being particularly vocal regarding their dislike towards Vimscript. And would you also be so kind to share your thoughts regarding Neovim?

As for configuring it for development I started with spacevim and managed with half the functionality normal IDE provides for quite some time. The experience was still good. About 6 months ago I set up nvim and now I have everything I need. I think setting up nvim for rust was as complicated as setting up spacevim. Spacevim provides way more out of the box but changing configuration is not easy at all.

Would it be fair to assume that the switch from SpaceVim to Neovim was due to how difficult changing its configuration was to better suit your needs? Would you say this is SpaceVim's fault? Or rather Vimscript is to be blamed?

I don’t worry about vim/nvim “schism”. The support is still great.

I also meant it in the sense that perhaps later down the line something else will come out to 'replace'/'improve' upon Neovim. Until -in turn- that one is one day replaced as well and so on and so forth... Like, we've already gone from Vi -> Vim -> Neovim. While, on the other hand, Emacs still is Emacs. Thankfully, the modal editing part of Vim should persevere regardless; even if the name of the editor changes every so often.

I would say just go with nvim, spend a week to set it up and don’t get too obsessive if small things don’t work. Enjoy the amazing responsiveness and great editor and you will figure out everything eventually. And if you have any questions just ask. I can share my config.

Thank you for the encouragement! At this point, I intend to start with Vi(m) to get used to the core experience.

As to why - because it, like any other computer science topic, is a topic of active research, and Kakoune is the next generation of research into modal editing.

Interesting. First time I'm hearing this, but I'm very interested to learn about it. Thank you for mentioning this!

That’s right, but as a Neovim user, it’s hard for me to use Vi, because it lacks many features, and I don’t know which ones.

Very interesting. Did you first start with Vim or Neovim?

Which distribution is right for me?

Step 1: Take a look at the most popular desktop environments: Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma and Xfce. If possible, consider even booting up a so-called live-usb and/or VM for some proper testing.

Step 2: Pick either one out of Fedora, Linux Mint, openSUSE and Pop!_OS as long as they provide a Flavor/Spin of your favorite desktop environment (which you should have found out by now (See Step 1)). While not exhaustive, the following might help you out:

• If you have an Nvidia GPU, then just use Pop!_OS. Unless you really, but like really hate its GNOME implementation.
• Linux Mint and Pop!_OS are arguably the most newbie-friendly out of these. This doesn't mean that Fedora or openSUSE are hard by any means. (Heck, I started my Linux journey with Fedora.) However, both Fedora and openSUSE are known for their great adherence to FOSS. Therefore, some decisions related to initial setup might not have been taken with a focus on making it as user friendly as possible.
• If security is your highest priority, then consider either one of Fedora or openSUSE with GNOME/KDE Plasma. It's not like the others are security nightmares, however Fedora and openSUSE are known to take security more seriously than the others do.
• Both Linux Mint and Pop!_OS are distros that are based on LTS distros. As such, the base system will not change a lot until you upgrade to the next big release; which happens once every two years. Fedora, is able to change more considerably between its major releases; which happen once every half year. On the other hand, openSUSE Tumbleweed doesn't really hold back updates at all; there's an (almost) constant stream of updates. Though openSUSE also offers distros with a 'more stable^[1]^' release cycle; the likes of Slowroll and Leap come to mind.

Where can I find useful resources for learning about a given distribution?

Consider asking it here. We'll do our best to answer. Furthermore, DistroWatch.com is a great resource.

1. Stable, in this context, refers to slow to no rate of change while running software. So, in this context it isn't used to convey breakage etc.

i’d like to try gnome or kde plasma

I'm surprised to see that no one has mentioned the following yet:

"KDE Edition

In continuation with what’s been done in the past, Linux Mint 18.3 will feature a KDE edition, but it will be the last release to do so.

I would like to thank Kubuntu for the amazing work they have done. The quality of Plasma 5 in Xenial made backports a necessity. The rapid pace of development upstream from the KDE project made this very challenging, yet they managed to provide a stable flow of updates for us and we were able to ship good KDE editions thanks to that. I don’t think this would have been possible without them.

KDE is a fantastic environment but it’s also a different world, one which evolves away from us and away from everything we focus on. Their apps, their ecosystem and the QT toolkit which is central there have very little in common with what we’re working on.

We’re not just shipping releases and distributing upstream software. We’re a product distribution and we see ourselves as a complete desktop operating system. We like to integrate solutions, develop what’s missing, adapt what’s not fitting perfectly, and we do a great deal of that not only around our own Cinnamon desktop environment but also thanks to cross-DE frameworks we put in place to support similar environments, such as MATE and Xfce.

When we work on tools like Xed, Blueberry, Mintlocale, the Slick Greeter, we’re developing features which benefit these 3 desktops, but unfortunately not KDE.

Users of the KDE edition represent a portion of our user base. I know from their feedback that they really enjoy it. They will be able to install KDE on top of Linux Mint 19 of course and I’m sure the Kubuntu PPA will continue to be available. They will be able to port Mint software to Kubuntu itself also, or they might want to trade a bit of stability away and move to to a bleeding edge distribution such as Arch to follow upstream KDE more closely.

Our own mission isn’t to diversify as much as possible in an effort to attract a bigger chunk of the Linux market, and it’s with a bit of sadness that we’re letting this edition go. We focus on things we do well and we love doing to get better and better at doing them. KDE is amazing but it’s not what we want to focus on.

With Linux Mint 18.3, we’ll release one more KDE edition. I wanted this announcement to come before the release. It will hurt its popularity of course, but I wanted to give users time, either to react right now or to take their time, upgrade and adapt to this later on. I’m sure this edition will be missed and I hope its users understand our decision."

From this Linux Mint blog post*.

Note that this doesn't mean that you can't use KDE Plasma (or GNOME for that matter). Though you have to be aware that you'll be on your own whenever something breaks. And if you have to ask how to change Desktop Environment in the first place, then I think that you might not be ready yet for such a ride. Instead, consider using a distro that actually does offer GNOME and/or KDE Plasma editions of its distro; the likes of Fedora, openSUSE and Pop!_OS come to mind.

Seriously, if you want an IDE for Python and C#, VS Code with the Microsoft plugins is and will be miles ahead of the VIM experience.

Someone else already pointed how VS Code has become the most popular IDE (at least according to statistics found on stackoverflow). While categorically I'd like to dismiss VS Code for not adhering to F(L)OSS, VSCodium -however- actually does fit the bill. And while formerly I've had bad experiences on it related to how the plugin ecosystem is configured by default compared to VS Code, I've since learned how it works on VSCodium. So I shall set it up in case Emacs and/or (Neo)Vim somehow seem to be less fit for the job and/or I can't be bothered at that moment to configure Emacs/(Neo)Vim to do my bidding.

Learn vi

Will do.

The time trying to force VIM/EMACS into a descent IDE will never come back and the theory sounds better than it will be in reality.

I understand the concerns. And I agree that I should be realistic in how I approach this. Nonetheless, I'm faithful for it to be a very productive endeavor. Thank you for chiming in!

Yup, I think you've hit the nail on its head. I've decided on using both and explore their possibilities and find how they can be best utilized for my workflow. Thank you for the excellent engagement!

I’m not using lsp in Neovim so if I need lsp I’ll just pull out emacs. If I’m already in the terminal I’ll usually pull out Neovim to edit a file, but if I’m writing like markdown or something that uses images I like the ability to display images inline in emacs. LaTeX is always something I do in emacs because there’s a built in pdf viewer in emacs and there’s built in spell check also. In the terminal in emacs, sometimes I open up Neovim to do a quick edit because of muscle memory from the terminal. One thing that’s really cool about Neovim is that you can embed it in other applications, so if I really have to use an ide that’s not emacs, I’ll just do that.

Wow, the insights! *Vehemently noting these down somewhere* Heck, I think you've cracked the code. Since I've created these posts, I became more and more aware of how great both Emacs and (Neo)Vim are. And while I was already flirting with the idea to perhaps use both, I think you've just completely obliterated any other option; which is a good thing. As such, I'm actually grasping for words that would somehow be able to properly convey the feelings of gratitude I currently experience. For whatever it's worth; thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Yeah there’s a thing called EAF, which allows python and javascript to be embedded in emacs. It allows for more complex applications to be built in emacs, similar to VSCode. I’m not sure how difficult it is to make something with EAF, but I haven’t really seen any things written in it that aren’t in the EAF organization. I think the future could be EAF or maybe something like EAF to be able to leverage the power of the javascript ecosystem like how VSCode does for a lot of plugins. There have been some attempts to rewrite emacs in different languages, but emacs is too large, and you would lose the old ecosystem by doing that.

Once more; much appreciated!

There’s a larger community around Doom Emacs, and Doom Emacs looks nicer. Honestly though it doesn’t matter that much which one you use since they are both pretty good.

Yet again; I'm grateful! Have a good one! I wish you and your loved ones the best!

Unless you really want vim bindings

I kinda do for how ubiquitous Vim keybindings are.

try them out.

Regardless, I think I will try it out after I'm at least somewhat productive with Vim.

I much prefer the way Kakoune works over vim

I think preference is generally subjective. So you're completely in your right to prefer Kakoune over Vim (and vice versa). Though, if possible, would you mind elaborating what you prefer exactly and why?

while still being close enough so that you can pick it up quickly if you already know vim and the other way around.

Doesn't that disrupt muscle memory?

I probably would have never got into Emacs at all if I had to start with vanilla.

Very interesting. I assume this is due to the amount of effort that would have been required for it to acquire some of the functionality you were expecting out of it. Am I right?

IMO Lisp is what makes Emacs great, and vimscript is (was?) an absolute nightmare for anything complex. I don’t think lua is a bad language, but I’ll still take Lisp any day for this purpose.

This is actually a great point that I somehow completely ignored so far. I intend to put my teeth in GNU Guix at some point in the future. As Guile Scheme and Lisp are -to my knowledge- at least in some way related, using Emacs should at least provide an excellent platform for me to get accustomed to what it is yet to come. Thanks for mentioning that!

What I described isn’t using containers. Nix just provides an environment for processes to run in, and direnv-mode ensures it’s using the right environment for a given buffer in Emacs. So for example I don’t have OmniSharp or dotnet in my user $PATH, but they are provided by the nix expression in a particular project directory. That allows lsp-mode to start OmniSharp as a language server, or I can run dotnet build using the Emacs compile command.

That sounds very compelling! Thanks for that insight! Perhaps I should stop procrastinating and get on with learning Nix 😅.

You can define containers with nix and manage them with nixos-container. I do that for testing server deployments, or running sandboxed services, but I’ve never needed something that complex for a dev shell.

Yet another reason in support of learning Nix.

I was shocked when I went from “I’ve never used spacemacs before” to “I’m comfortably writing LaTeX here” in about half an hour.

This line really piqued my interest, especially considering that I've had another conversation with someone else in which the general sentiment seemed to be that "Spacemacs expects you to know Emacs, while being a completely different beast of itself.". May I ask how your Spacemacs is configured? Would you say it's close to the default config? Or rather a significant departure? Furthermore, I believe I've read the existence of some kind of version control. Which, at least by the name of it, should somehow contribute to a more stable experience. Or am I perhaps confusing things?

My setup still breaks occasionally and sometimes it’s a bit difficult to figure out why and how to fix it

Does this happen randomly? Or rather as a 'response'?

I like being able to change how the editor works on the fly just by writing some elisp anywhere

This sounds very interesting and promising. Would you mind providing an example of sorts such that I can perhaps better grasp both the sheer amount of new possibilities it provides as well as its (possible) limitations (if at all)?

I like that emacs has been around for decades and will be around for decades more.

I wholeheartedly agree! But, I am at least somewhat concerned when it comes to its 'gravitational pull from afar'. To me at least, it seems as if, currently, Neovim does a better job at attracting new people. Perhaps these are just mostly refugees from Vim. Nonetheless, it can't be ignored (I think). Would you mind sharing your thoughts on this?