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Vim VS Kakoune

Compare Vim VS Kakoune and see what are their differences

Vim logo Vim

Highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing

Kakoune logo Kakoune

Vim inspired — Faster as in less keystrokes — Multiple selections — Orthogonal design
  • Vim Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-23
  • Kakoune Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-13

Vim features and specs

  • Efficiency
    Once learned, Vim can significantly speed up text editing with its modal editing, keyboard shortcuts, and commands that allow for quick navigation and manipulation of text.
  • Lightweight
    Vim is a very lightweight editor, consuming minimal system resources, making it highly performant even on systems with lower specifications.
  • Customizability
    Vim is highly configurable and extensible through plugins and user-defined settings, allowing users to tailor the editor to their specific needs.
  • Ubiquity
    Vim is available on almost every Unix-like system and even on Windows, making it a ubiquitous tool that you can rely on being available in most environments.
  • Support for Multiple Programming Languages
    Vim supports a wide range of programming languages out of the box and offers syntax highlighting, which can be enhanced through plugins.
  • Powerful Search and Replace
    Vim offers robust searching and replacing functionalities, including support for regular expressions, which can be a powerful tool for developers.

Possible disadvantages of Vim

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Vim's modal editing and extensive set of commands can be daunting for new users, requiring significant time and effort to master.
  • Minimal Default Config
    The default configuration of Vim is quite minimalistic, which may necessitate additional setup and customization to meet modern development needs.
  • Limited GUI
    Vim primarily operates in a terminal, and while there are graphical variants like GVim, they are not as feature-rich or user-friendly as modern GUI editors.
  • Plugin Management
    While Vim is highly extensible, managing and configuring plugins can be cumbersome compared to more modern editors that offer integrated plugin management.
  • Inconsistent Behavior Across Platforms
    There may be inconsistencies in behavior or available features of Vim across different operating systems, which can complicate its use in certain environments.
  • Lack of Integrated Modern Features
    Vim lacks some modern IDE features like integrated debugging, advanced code introspection, and refined autocompletion, which often require third-party plugins to achieve.

Kakoune features and specs

  • Modal Editing
    Kakoune uses a modal editing style similar to Vim, which can be more efficient for experienced users who prefer to keep their hands on the keyboard.
  • Interactive and Asynchronous
    Kakoune is designed to be both interactive and asynchronous, providing immediate feedback for commands which can enhance the editing experience.
  • Selections
    Kakoune treats text editing as a multiple selections-oriented operation, enabling powerful, simultaneous edits across multiple text locations, which can speed up complex text manipulations.
  • Simplicity in Configuration
    Kakoune’s configuration files are written in a simple, declarative syntax, making it easier for users to customize their setup without extensive scripting.
  • Performance
    Kakoune is designed with performance in mind, resulting in a lightweight and fast editor even with large files.
  • Extensible Plugin System
    Kakoune supports various plugins and has a community-driven set of extensions, allowing users to extend functionality as needed.
  • Language Support
    Built-in support for syntax highlighting and other language-specific features for many programming languages.

Possible disadvantages of Kakoune

  • Learning Curve
    Kakoune has a steep learning curve, especially for users not familiar with modal editing or coming from different types of text editors.
  • Plugin Ecosystem
    While Kakoune has an extensible plugin system, its plugin ecosystem is not as mature or extensive as more established editors like Vim or Emacs.
  • Limited GUI Support
    Kakoune primarily operates in the terminal, with limited graphical user interface support, which might be a drawback for users who prefer more visual editing environments.
  • Smaller User Base
    Kakoune has a smaller user base compared to more mainstream editors, potentially resulting in fewer community resources, tutorials, and third-party tool integrations.
  • Reliance on Command Line
    Heavy reliance on command-line operations can be intimidating or cumbersome for users who are not comfortable with the terminal.
  • Limited IDE Features
    Kakoune lacks some of the advanced integrated development environment (IDE) features out-of-the-box, such as integrated debugging or project management tools.

Vim videos

What Vim Is and Why You Should Learn It

More videos:

  • Review - JAC Vapour VIM Review - JAC does a side by side mod...
  • Review - Jac Vapour VIM - Quick Look

Kakoune videos

Kakoune Is A More Efficient Text Editor

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Vim and Kakoune)
Text Editors
89 89%
11% 11
IDE
89 89%
11% 11
Software Development
90 90%
10% 10
Productivity
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Vim and Kakoune. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Vim and Kakoune

Vim Reviews

Boost Your Productivity with These Top Text Editors and IDEs
Vim offers a variety of features like split windows, macros, and extensive customization options. It has a steep learning curve, but once you master it, you’ll be amazed at the speed and productivity it brings to your coding workflow. Vim is a favorite among experienced developers who value speed and efficiency above all else.
Source: convesio.com
13 Best Text Editors to Speed up Your Workflow
It’s tough to say which developers would enjoy Vim as a text editor. It’s an old system with an outdated interface. Yet, it still has the charm and powerful feature-set that the average developer needs. I would recommend it to more advanced developers who enjoy using open source software and being a part of a community–like the one you can find behind Vim.
Source: kinsta.com
12 Best LaTeX Editors You Should Use
The entire installation process is perfectly documented on their Sourceforge page, which you must definitely pay a visit. There is another standalone Vim software, known as the gVim that brings a GUI-based interface to the Vim document editor. Vim-LaTeX has been developed specifically for the programmers and it is so highly configurable that it can function anyway, ranging...
Source: beebom.com
The Top 7 Notepad++ Alternatives for You
Vim is a totally free Notepad++ alternative. It is available to use on Windows, Mac and Linux computers and it is very powerful. I was able to customize Vim to get it to look and function just how I want it. There is really good help support with Vim so if you are new to programming it will get you through most issues.
10 Best Notepad++ Alternatives in 2020
Vim is an advanced text editor open source tool which is also considered to be an IDE in its way. This tool allows managing your text editing activities with vim editors and UNIX System which can be used on-premise or online.
Source: www.guru99.com

Kakoune Reviews

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

Social recommendations and mentions

Kakoune might be a bit more popular than Vim. We know about 10 links to it since March 2021 and only 10 links to Vim. 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.

Vim mentions (10)

  • regular Vim has lua?!
    Lua is quite small, encouraging distros to include it. The ubuntu gvim has, and the gvim AppImage linked from vim.org does. The default Makefile from github is set up to not include it, but you can uncomment one line there to get it. Source: about 2 years ago
  • is there a way to make highlighted text persistent after quit when using something like [match Search /\%'.line('.').'l/] ?
    I've not used vimwiki locally (tho I'm old enough to remember the Vim wiki on vim.org :), but I think what you are wanting to do is extend vimwiki's syntax file. I presume it installs one at $VIMRUNTIM/syntax or or ~/.vim/syntax. If this sounds right, then create a ~/.vim/after/syntax/vimwiki.vim file and place your match command in there. Then everytime you open a vimwiki file it should apply your... Source: over 2 years ago
  • vim.org - Is there a reason for this 1800s-esque design?
    Vim.org has 242k total visitors, tailwindcss.com has 4.4m, planetscale.com has 412k, jpl.nasa.gov has 2.6m, all built with Tailwind, all several years younger than Vim's website. Unnecessary comparison, unnecessary defence. It's a valuable tool, fine, but a complete disregard for anyone who doesn't love a crappy website and would like to navigate a website like a normal human is not something to be defended. Maybe... Source: over 2 years ago
  • What is YOUR process of writing ?
    I write in Vim with some customizations in my vimrc to gear it more towards prose writing than code editing. It's not pretty, but Normal Mode and Ex commands are the most powerful text editing tools out there, so that means I spend less time on making corrections and other edits. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Why developers need to know about Vim
    If you are open minded and would like to try it out, click me for more information! Cheers. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
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Kakoune mentions (10)

  • Show HN: Ki Editor
    Fascinating idea! To summarize for those who know [Kakoune](https://github.com/mawww/kakoune), the idea is that every command has the form ["selection mode" -> "movement" -> "action"](https://ki-editor.github.io/ki-editor/comparisons/modal-editors.html) instead of Kakoune's movement->action. So, instead of having separate commands for "next character", "next word", "next structural element", there is one command... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Helix: Release 24.03 Highlights
    Helix's modal editing is based on Kakoune's modal editing which is like an evolution to Vim's modal editing. You can think of it as being always in selection (visual) mode. https://github.com/mawww/kakoune?tab=readme-ov-file#selectio.... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • I don't need your query language
    You might like kakoune (https://github.com/mawww/kakoune), which does exactly that: first you select the range (which can even be disjoint, e.g. All words matching a regex), then you operate on it. By default, the selected range is the character under cursor, and multiple cursors work out of the box. It also generally follows the Unix philosophy, e.g. By using shell... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • I use nano BTW.
    It might be worth checking out kakoune if you are experimenting with editors. It’s supposed to be equally powerful to vim but much easier to learn. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Mle is a small, flexible, terminal-based text editor written in C
    For that, try Kakoune[1], which is modal with a mostly-postfix language instead of vi's usually-prefix one and uses this to also be a multiple-selections editor with immediate visual feedback. It falls too much into the uncanny valley of almost-but-not-quite-vi for some people, though. [1] https://kakoune.org/, https://github.com/mawww/kakoune. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Vim and Kakoune, 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.

Light Table - Light Table is a new interactive IDE that lets you modify running programs and embed anything from...

Notepad++ - A free source code editor which supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment.

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

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