GNU Emacs VS Spacemacs

Compare GNU Emacs VS Spacemacs and see what are their differences

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GNU Emacs

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more.

Spacemacs

Community-driven Emacs distribution that meshes Emacs and Vim features.

Landing page //
2023-01-19

Landing page //
2019-04-26

GNU Emacs

Website: gnu.org
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Spacemacs

Website: spacemacs.org
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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.

Spacemacs features and specs

Customizability
Spacemacs is highly customizable, leveraging the power of Emacs and Vim. Users can tailor their development environment to exactly fit their workflow.
Community-driven
Spacemacs benefits from a strong, active community. Users have access to a wealth of shared configurations, extensions, and advice.
Hybrid Model
Combines the best features of Emacs and Vim, allowing users to switch easily between editing styles and take advantage of both systems’ strengths.
Ease of Setup
Spacemacs provides an easy-to-use distribution of Emacs, simplifying the initial setup process and making it more accessible for newcomers.
Rich Documentation
Spacemacs comes with extensive documentation, both official and user-generated, which makes it easier to learn and troubleshoot issues.

Possible disadvantages of Spacemacs

Steep Learning Curve
Despite simplifying Emacs, Spacemacs can still be daunting for beginners, requiring time and effort to master.
Performance
Spacemacs can be slow to start up and may lag with heavy configurations or large files, impacting overall performance.
Complexity
The combination of Emacs and Vim features can add layers of complexity, potentially overwhelming users who may prefer a more straightforward tool.
Dependency on Emacs
Users are still reliant on Emacs and its ecosystem, which might be a downside for those looking to avoid the intricacies of Emacs altogether.
Resource Intensive
Compared to other editors, Spacemacs can be more resource-intensive, consuming more memory and CPU power.

Analysis of GNU Emacs

Overall verdict

GNU Emacs is widely considered to be a powerful and versatile text editor, especially among programmers and developers.

Why this product is good

Highly Customizable: Emacs can be extensively customized with Emacs Lisp, enabling users to tailor the editor to fit their specific workflow.
Rich Ecosystem: There is a large variety of plug-ins and extensions available, which can transform it into much more than just a text editor.
Built-in Tools: Emacs includes numerous built-in tools such as a debugger, calendar, email client, and file manager, making it a comprehensive development environment.
Cross-Platform: Emacs runs on multiple platforms, which makes it accessible to a broad audience.

Recommended for

Programmers and developers who appreciate a customizable and extensible tool.
Users who want to integrate various development tools into a single environment.
Individuals comfortable with learning Emacs Lisp to create and understand custom scripts and configurations.
People interested in a text editor that has a strong and supportive community.

Analysis of Spacemacs

Overall verdict

Spacemacs is considered a strong editor choice for those comfortable with both Emacs and Vim. It excels particularly for users who appreciate the extensive possibilities for customization and the efficiency of a mnemonic keybinding system. However, mastering Spacemacs can require an initial learning curve.

Why this product is good

Spacemacs combines the extensibility and customization of Emacs with the efficiency and ergonomics of Vim, making it appealing to users from both editor families. It offers a rich set of features out of the box and has a large community contributing to its continual improvement. The unique spacemacs configuration layer system simplifies the customization of Emacs, which can traditionally be complex.<br>Most notably, Spacemacs provides a robust and versatile platform for developers who work with multiple programming languages and requires tools that can handle various aspects of software development in a fluid manner.

Recommended for

Developers with prior experience in Emacs or Vim.
Users who are interested in a highly customizable and extendable editor.
Programmers looking for an editor that supports multiple languages and dev tools in one platform.
People interested in the power of both Vim's modal editing and Emacs' feature-rich ecosystem.

GNU Emacs videos

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Switching to GNU Emacs

Spacemacs videos

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Spacemacs For Noobs

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GNU Emacs and Spacemacs)

Spacemacs

Text Editors

75 75%

Text Editors

25% 25

IDE

79 79%

IDE

21% 21

IDEs And Text Editors

100 100%

IDEs And Text Editors

0% 0

Productivity

0 0%

Productivity

100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using GNU Emacs and Spacemacs. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Reviews

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

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.

Source: www.technize.com

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

Spacemacs Reviews

Top 8 Sublime Text Alternatives You Can Use in 2019

Spacemacs uses the space bar as a default leader key, which is where the program gets its name from. The syntax highlighting feature on Spacemacs is enabled by default for all major programming languages, and it is configurable manually through configuration files as well as via internal commands. For all its positives, the program can be quite a bit glitchy at times. From...

Source: beebom.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Spacemacs might be a bit more popular than GNU Emacs. We know about 6 links to it since March 2021 and only 6 links to GNU Emacs. 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.

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: about 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: almost 3 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: almost 4 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: almost 4 years ago

Spacemacs mentions (6)

Our teacher only allows us to use VIM
Show them spacemacs.org, github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs or at least spacevim.org. Source: about 3 years ago
Creating Haskell notebooks with org-mode
Your Emacs will need some packages: org, org-babel and haskell-mode. If you use spacemacs it is enough to add these layers in your .spacemacs:. - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago
Vim Users! Share your Clever Configs and Plugin Setups (or learn something new)🔥
Try https://spacemacs.org magit + org-mode are the big selling points. Magit especially for programming. Source: about 4 years ago
Emacs' org-mode gets citation support
Aside from editing on mobile devices, I think Emacs isn't as hard to pick up as it once was. It's certainly not easy but tools like Spacemacs or Doom make it much simpler to get started and really limit the need to create and edit a complicated little library of your Elisp code. http://spacemacs.org https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs. - Source: Hacker News / about 4 years ago
A guide to create tmux like Custom Layouts in Spacemacs
Coming from a vim world with tmux, I had really missed the multiple split window layout in Spacemacs. But after knowing how to define custom layouts this seemed to be an easy exercise for me. - Source: dev.to / over 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

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

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

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.

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

Neovim - Vim's rebirth for the 21st century

Microsoft Visual Studio - Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft.

Kakoune - Vim inspiredâââFaster as in less keystrokesâââMultiple selectionsâââOrthogonal design

VS Code vs GNU Emacs

VS Code vs Spacemacs

Sublime Text vs GNU Emacs

Sublime Text vs Spacemacs