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Spacemacs VS Doom Emacs

Compare Spacemacs VS Doom Emacs and see what are their differences

Spacemacs logo Spacemacs

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

Doom Emacs logo Doom Emacs

Emacs configuration similar to Spacemacs but faster and lighter.
  • Spacemacs Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-04-26
  • Doom Emacs Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-21

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.

Doom Emacs features and specs

  • Optimized Performance
    Doom Emacs is engineered to be fast and responsive, minimizing the lag that can be present in a heavily customized Emacs setup.
  • Modular Configuration
    It uses a modular configuration system that allows users to enable or disable individual modules easily, helping tailor Emacs to specific workflows without much hassle.
  • Community Support
    Doom Emacs has an active and helpful community, providing ample support, tutorials, and extensions.
  • Modern Defaults
    It comes with sensible defaults and polished aesthetics out of the box, reducing the need for extensive user configuration.
  • Extensive Documentation
    Doom Emacs provides thorough documentation that helps new and old users understand the configuration options and customization procedures.
  • Evil Mode
    For Vim users, Doom Emacs comes with Evil Mode pre-configured, enabling Vim-like keybindings and making the transition smoother.

Possible disadvantages of Doom Emacs

  • Learning Curve
    Although easier than vanilla Emacs, Doom Emacs still has a learning curve that may be steep for users unfamiliar with Emacs or Vim.
  • Opinionated Setup
    Its opinionated defaults may not suit everyone's preferences, requiring users to spend time customizing it to fit their specific needs.
  • Emacs Dependency
    It relies on the original Emacs distribution, which means you still need to understand and maintain Emacs, adding complexity.
  • Heavy on Resources
    Even though optimized, Doom Emacs is still more resource-intensive compared to lighter editors, potentially impacting performance on older systems.
  • Complexity in Customization
    While modular, the customization can become complex and intimidating, especially for users who need to diverge significantly from the provided defaults.
  • Frequent Updates
    While updates are generally positive, the high frequency of updates can sometimes lead to breaking changes, requiring users to adapt frequently.

Spacemacs videos

Spacemacs For Noobs

More videos:

  • Review - Can VSCode be a reasonable Spacemacs alternative? (VSpaceCode)
  • Review - EmacsCast 4 - Spacemacs vs Doom vs Emacs

Doom Emacs videos

Doom Emacs - Getting Started

More videos:

  • Review - Doom Emacs For Noobs

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Spacemacs and Doom Emacs)
Text Editors
37 37%
63% 63
IDE
32 32%
68% 68
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0
Software Development
33 33%
67% 67

User comments

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Reviews

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

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

Doom Emacs Reviews

We have no reviews of Doom Emacs yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Doom Emacs seems to be a lot more popular than Spacemacs. While we know about 156 links to Doom Emacs, we've tracked only 6 mentions of Spacemacs. 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.

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: almost 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 / over 3 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: over 3 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 / almost 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 / almost 4 years ago
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Doom Emacs mentions (156)

  • I just got an ad in VS Code
    Leave? I started with vanilla Emacs a couple of years ago, ran C-h t, did that for an hour or two, and began editing joyfully and it hasn't stopped. Picked up new stuff when the need arose. However, if you want everything looking sexy and modern from the start and you're a cool kid, give this 30 minutes and see what you think: - Source: Hacker News / 16 days ago
  • Helix-gpui: helix gpui front end
    Having used evil-mode as my main driver for years, I can confirm that it truly works as expected. Requires some setup though. I used https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs to do the heavy lifting though. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • M-X Reloaded: The Second Golden Age of Emacs – (Think)
    Yes, you need to install Emacs. It is probably available from whatever package manager your system uses. I prefer Doom (https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs) to Spacemacs. However I haven't looked at Spacemacs for many years; perhaps it's now on par with Doom. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • From Doom to Vanilla Emacs
    Ever since I've started my Emacs journey it seemed like the wholy grail to have your own (vanilla!) configuration without any hard dependencies on frameworks like Doom or Spacemacs. There are plenty of dotemacs configurations ouf there which can serve as a great source of inspiration. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Emacs 29.1 Released
    I am a long-time Emacs user and used to maintain my own config, but I switched to Doom Emacs [1] a year ago. Doom Emacs is like a pre-packaged/pre-configured emacs distro. You still need to configure the features that you want to use, but it's a lot easier (and faster) than having to do everything from scratch, and definitely if you already have some emacs background anyway. For me, it makes the newer, more... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

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

Evil - The extensible vi layer for Emacs.

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

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

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

Neovim - Vim's rebirth for the 21st century