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Evil VS GNU Emacs

Compare Evil VS GNU Emacs and see what are their differences

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Evil logo Evil

The extensible vi layer for Emacs.

GNU Emacs logo GNU Emacs

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more.
  • Evil Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-04
  • GNU Emacs Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-19

Evil features and specs

  • Vim Emulation
    Evil provides a near-complete emulation of Vim’s features within Emacs, allowing users who are familiar with Vim to transition without losing their preferred keybindings and workflow.
  • Customizability
    Evil allows users to customize their configurations extensively, combining the powerful text-editing capabilities of Vim with the customizability of Emacs.
  • Community Support
    Evil has a large and active community, providing a wealth of plugins and resources to enhance the text editing experience.
  • Mode Integration
    Evil integrates smoothly with various Emacs major and minor modes, allowing users to leverage the full functionality of Emacs alongside Vim's modal editing.

Possible disadvantages of Evil

  • Learning Curve
    For users unfamiliar with Vim, the modal editing approach can introduce a significant learning curve, particularly for those accustomed to traditional text editors.
  • Complex Configuration
    Configuring Evil to fully integrate with existing Emacs setups can be complex and time-consuming, especially when customizing keybindings and behaviors.
  • Performance
    In some cases, using Evil with certain Emacs configurations or plugins may lead to performance issues, such as lag or delayed responses.
  • Inconsistencies
    There might be inconsistencies between Evil’s implementation of Vim features and the original, which could affect workflows for power users who rely on specific Vim functionalities.

GNU Emacs features and specs

  • Highly Extensible
    GNU Emacs is highly customizable, allowing users to configure nearly every aspect using Emacs Lisp. This makes it remarkably adaptable for various workflows.
  • Rich Plugin Ecosystem
    There is a wide array of plugins available for Emacs, extending its functionality for programming, text editing, project management, and more.
  • Versatile
    Aside from text editing, Emacs can function as an email client, web browser, terminal emulator, and more, making it a powerful multi-purpose tool.
  • Free and Open Source
    GNU Emacs is free to use and modify, with source code available under the GNU General Public License, encouraging collaborative improvement and transparency.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    Emacs runs on many different operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and various Unix-like systems, ensuring a wide reach and consistent experience across platforms.

Possible disadvantages of GNU Emacs

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Due to its vast array of features and unique keybindings, new users often find Emacs difficult to learn initially.
  • Performance
    Emacs can be slower compared to more lightweight text editors, especially when heavily customized or handling large files.
  • Keyboard-Centric Interface
    Emacs relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts, which can be overwhelming and complex, leading to potential finger strain from extensive use.
  • Complex Configuration
    While its customizability is a strength, configuring Emacs to fit personal needs can be time-consuming and complex, requiring knowledge of Emacs Lisp.

Evil videos

Evil - Season 1 Review [No Spoilers]

More videos:

  • Review - Evil Season 2 Finale Review! (Episode 13)
  • Review - Evil (CBS): Finale/Season 1 - TV Review

GNU Emacs videos

Switching to GNU Emacs

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Evil and GNU Emacs)
Text Editors
17 17%
83% 83
IDE
18 18%
82% 82
Knowledge Management
100 100%
0% 0
IDEs And Text Editors
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Evil and GNU Emacs

Evil Reviews

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GNU Emacs Reviews

14 BEST LaTeX Editor for Mac & Windows in 2022
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It is one of the best LaTeX editor for Mac that allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Source: www.guru99.com
The Top 7 Notepad++ Alternatives for You
Emacs has been around in its various forms since 1976 and is another very worthy Notepad++ alternative. When I first started using Emacs I have to admit that I didn’t find it the easiest to use. But once I got used to it I realized just how powerful Emacs is for the programming community.
10 Best Notepad++ Alternatives in 2020
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Source: www.guru99.com
7 open source alternatives to Dreamweaver
Vim or Emacs. Without participating in the holy war between these two traditional text editors, I can safely say that there are a number of enhancements for web editing available for both. So if you're already a terminal junkie, take your pick. Or, if those don't satisfy, try one of these Emacs/Vim alternatives.
Source: opensource.com
10 Best Sublime Text Alternatives in 2019
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Source: www.guru99.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Evil should be more popular than GNU Emacs. It has been mentiond 60 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Evil mentions (60)

  • Creating an Emacs major mode - because why not?
    For multiple reasons, one of them just being curiosity, I started using Emacs. And before anyone wants to start waging the holy war of editors1, I'll put myself out there and pronounce that the one and only correct answer is: Emacs with EVIL (GitHub) mode. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Helix-gpui: helix gpui front end
    Emacs is whatever you want it to be, and it has wonderful modal editing packages such as evil-mode[1] - which surpasses the editing system from vi that it is based on - and Meow[2] 1. https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil. - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Packages that you would like to be in emacs core ?
    Since we already have vyper-mode, why not add Evil to the stack? Source: over 1 year ago
  • Ask HN: Does anyone Lisp without Emacs?
    2 stripe blue belt here! I used to use Vim for everything other than Java development and have now adopted Emacs in the same way. I am using it for Clojure and Common Lisp development along with org mode, irc, rss, git and file management I started with Evil mode and then moved to Xah fly keys before sticking to the emacs bindings. Having the caps lock key bound to CTRL helped me a lot. I don't know if it makes... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Emacs Is My New Window Manager
    If you already know Vim, you should probably not use Emacs without Evil: https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil It gives you comprehensive Vim bindings so what you need to learn to be comfortable in Emacs is very little. As a bonus, it also keeps your RSI risk unchanged. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
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GNU Emacs mentions (6)

  • Emacs daemon as sytemd service in debian 12 (gnome)
    Cat .config/systemd/user/default.target.wants/emacs.service [Unit] Description=Emacs text editor Documentation=info:emacs man:emacs(1) https://gnu.org/software/emacs/ [Service] Type=notify ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/emacs --fg-daemon # Emacs will exit with status 15 after having received SIGTERM, which # is the default "KillSignal" value systemd uses to stop services. SuccessExitStatus=15 # The location of the... Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Why does emacs exec path variable not just copy the users path variable?
    ## If your Emacs is installed in a non-standard location, you may need ## to copy this file to a standard directory, eg ~/.config/systemd/user/ . ## If you install this file by hand, change the "Exec" lines below ## to use absolute file names for the executables. [Unit] Description=Emacs text editor Documentation=info:emacs man:emacs(1)... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Hi DM's, what medium do you use to organise your campaign?
    For gathering notes, writing and organizing, Org-Roam which implies Org and Emacs. Source: over 2 years ago
  • This Guy is getting out of control at this point.
    I was heading to gnu.org/software/emacs to prove my point and it said:. Source: over 3 years ago
  • opam doesn't see emacs?
    <><> Version-specific details <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 🐫 Version 1 Repository default Homepage: "http://gnu.org/software/emacs" Bug-reports: "https://github.com/ocaml/opam-repository/issues" Authors: "anil@recoil.org" Maintainer: "anil@recoil.org" License: "GPL-1.0-or-later" Flags: conf Synopsis Virtual package to install the Emacs editor Description This... Source: over 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Evil and GNU Emacs, you can also consider the following products

Doom Emacs - Emacs configuration similar to Spacemacs but faster and lighter.

VS Code - Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

Org mode - Org: an Emacs Mode for Notes, Planning, and Authoring

Sublime Text - Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features. Fully customizable with macros, and syntax highlighting for most major languages.

beorg - Org-mode companion for iPhone and iPad

Vim - Highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing