LunarVim is best for overriding default settings. Other distros use Neo-Vim API and functions for example vim.opt.number = true LunarVim offers builtin like lsp, treesitter, dap etc for example color scheme and others stuff, Open Lvim press c to open config.lua file. lvim.colorscheme = "catppuccin" Format on save lvim.format_on_save.enabled = true Kep mapping lvim.builtin.which_key.mappings["l"]["f"] = { Command, functions etc go here } LunarVim is smart it will give you suggestions, when you type lvim. also errors You can use vim API as well,
thats funny, i went from custom to lazyvim. Took maybe 10 minutes to get rid of their keymaps/plugins and use my own. The docs were pretty straight forward in my experience, what tripped u up?@@Heidelbeermarmelade
@@Heidelbeermarmelade lazyvim can be used just as a plugin, you can just import which parts you want from lazyvim. For me, it only takes me about an hour to convert my own configs to lazyvim. for disabling a plugin, you can easily do it like add a new plugin. e.g. return { "nvim-neo-tree/neo-tree.nvim", enabled = false" }
I think the "Neovim From Scratch" project is an amazing alternative for people who find distros like these to be too opinionated. It's similar to a distro itself but with the accompanying video series on RU-vid, it walks you through configuring all the individual components that make a good editor. When you're done configuring, you'll have your own config exactly how you like it and you'll likely come out more comfortable with neovim overall.
I originally wrote my own Neovim config by following the "Neovim from Scratch" but I found it too tedious to maintain everything. So I switched to LunarVim and turns out many keybindings and plugins are shared between the two projects 👍
I'll just follow your advice. I'm currently using lazyvim, and being new to all these makes understanding what's really happening difficult, I get confused on how to setup plugins too.
This is great! Having built a config of my own that I'm happy with, I never felt the need to explore the distros. This video shines a light on the bright spots of the 4 I would consider and does it well. I think to get started quickly, any one of them would be a good fit for a new Neovim user. You have a new sub now!
@@retro_o Telescope runs fast for me, even on my very slow old windows workstation that I use with WSL. But I also use Harpoon a lot and the built in alternate file feature.
well if it's vscode vs. configure your nvim IDE for ages and if update breaks stuff configure for ages again then i use vscode you know code browse vscode: ctrl+mouseclick go back: the left side button of the mouse (like in firefox) and now vim: makes it complicated as fck and then this neo cult of the lamb: MOUSE BAD, MOUSE EVIL! EVIL MOUSE MOOUSE EEEEVILLLLL!
6:44 NvChad has pretty hard configuration mechanism, But NvChad is most well-written documents, as beginner or pro you will love it, (Best doc thn other distos)
I love the short videos like this that just get to the point. Quick and easy. When I first dove into nvim distros, this is pretty much the exact experience I had. The only thing I would add is the Kickstart config that was in your poll. I wish more people tried kickstart first, Its extremely helpful for newbies. Anyways, Great video!
Hello there! Greetings from Poland. Your work just give to my vim-experience second life. Some time ago I switched to MacOs and wanted to use vim. I tried regular vim and macvim, but then I came across nvim and later I discovered your videos. Great work! I really enjoy your talks. In the beginning using nvim was a little bit confusing to me, but then I found NvChad and it gripped me. However, after some time I felt I would love to have more control on what was happening behind the scenes in the configuration - and I ended up watching your videos on doing config from scratch. I watched them all, and I will do it for the second time as I see my understanding of nvim is growing. To sum up - your videos are both entertaining and full of practical information. You have your part in my return to vim! Thanks nerd :)
since, installation, keybindings and js lsp are almost similar you could've avoided those tests or added few unique tests. the only test where things differ where on the adding new plugins.
I think changing a keybinding or setting up new keybinding is a better metric compared to just which keybinding corresponds to what, but nonetheless nice video
@@typecraft_dev That would be nice. I personally would appreciate an in-depth look at LazyVim, as it looks very nice but also a bit too magical (I'm saying this without having really tried it and also as someone who is rather new to Neovim). Also as the one with more hotdogs, I think that it's a logical next video to watch for those that landed in this video without any preference within the 4 distros
I think there should have been an "extras" section for neat cherries on too for each distro. I think that both AstroNvim and NvChad would've gotten a good grade there due to the plugin spec repository that is astrocommunity and the NvChad-specific plugins repectively.
Oh for sure. I just wanted to keep this video as concise as possible, so I went by first impressions. I am aware there's waaaaay more to each repo and I only scratched the surface. Thanks!
to be honest most of the astrocommunity plugin specs are just the url of the plugin and nothing more. would have loved if it actually contributed to developer experience
@@comfysageonly a minority (~20%) of the specs are bare and a basic linking to the related plugin with added lazy loading info, most of which are the colorscheme specs.
NO. It is actually really cool that LunarVim doesn’t mess with your Neovim configuration or do weird shit like automatically symlinking it to the nvim command, because that way you have an strict separation of concerns: if for whatever reason the configuration breaks and you’re unable to use LVim, you can still use nvim and go on with your life until you have time to get back and fix it. Also, the rest of the distributions mentioned here all of the overwrite whatever you’ve set for Neovim stepping onto each other - that’s what I’d call “messy”. LVim might not be the best Nvim distribution out there, but at least it keeps things nice and tidy. Also, being a longtime Emacs -> Spacemacs -> Doom Emacs -> SpaceVim user, I found LVim incredibly easy to pick up and be productive from Day-1.
If ur config breaks, its very easy to load vanilla nvim, literally just an argument to nvim. Also, thats what a .bak is for. they don't overwite anything unless you chose too, if u want no keymaps or anything then u can easily change it urself. took me maybe 10 minutes to change everything to match my old custom config.
@@derschutz4737for some people it is easy, for others it is hard. I have found the experience of using LunarVim quite easy because it takes a long time to work out what the best plugins are. With LunarVim you have your two commands lvim and nvim so you can switch between them if you need.
Well, the biggest problem of NVChad, and what can make people get confused is, they make every plugin "Lazy" by default, which means if you don't add "cmd", "event" or "keys" to be a trigger to load the plugin, the the plugin you add will just sleep in the disk and never come up.(this takes me near 2 days to understand, as I'm new to neovim and not familiar with either nvim or Lazy.nvim) Well, it's pretty Lazy though.
I've never been a fan of pre configured nvim. Even when I used vim, it never worked for me to use someone else's vimrc. By the time you understand everything in the distro and learn someone else's key bindings, you could have learned and built it for yourself from scratch
I don't completely disagree but lazyvim, for me is great because it's a good way to manage plugins. I don't know that there are really custom keymaps, mostly they are default for each plugin. I do agree that I have had to go back and learn plugins and add custom configuration. I think, even if I did it from scratch, I would end up with much of the same plugins and had a harder time organizing everything. It is a time cheat, but for me, it's been worth it.
@@bubbatom1530 Ok, there's a very important difference to make here, and I think you might be talking about something different. lazy.nvim is a neovim plugin that works as a plugin manager. LazyVim is a neovim distribution(powered by lazy.nvim) that sets up NeoVim as a whole IDE. I think you might be referring to Lazy/lazy.nvim, the package manager, and not LazyVim, the neovim distribution/setup.
For me Astro had the better fit. Installation is pretty ease; custom plugins and configurations is also one of the easiest I could found. It's just about to have a user folder inside the lua config folder and your customs are being to be loaded. Pretty much the same as Lazy in this point. Yet, the better is that you can look around in other users configs, grab some customizations and add to yours and in the end have all of your configs in your personal git repository for versioning and later use.
Keybinding discovery section is useless when you reduced to only having which-key. I would do something like "How much under the hood keybinds have?" and along side this section I'd add "how dependant will make you to use this distro?". Having LSP Installed is pretty mandatory and is a useless metric, like which-key. The most important aspect of a distro is how far they went with their customizations, how many plugins has installed, how many default keybinds they overwrited. If it's possible to change their keybinds and how easy it is. Maybe you don't want to have Nerdtree and you want something like Lf, is possible to deactivate Nerdtree? Etc. So, with that in mind you can have a ranking of how heavy a distro is. Maybe someone is looking for a minimal distro with lazy, lsp, mason and telescope installed, with a ready to use nice structure so they can customize other plugins and don't need to have Noice or Lualine.
It’s great to see these distros in action, but I just don’t understand how this needed to be a 9-minute video. All of them had straightforward installation, had WhichKey, had Mason, and differed in plugin installation. This specific set of criteria could have been a 20-second graphic. Would love to learn more about what makes each of these distros different, and to explore what the experience would be like for Vim beginners. It’s impossible to unlearn the common plugins and keybindings, but for a first-time user, actually getting over the hurdle of learning Nvim can be very challenging. Being beginner-friendly might not be the goal of all of these distros, but regardless, any documentation and guidance in learning how to use that specific distro would have been a great category to compare.
Now this is a hobby ! I'm just tired of all the hyprland crap and desktop ricing non-sense. Those made a whole lot more sense when I had a sempron with 2GB back over a decade so awesome/xmonad + compton. So lets VIM. Lets GO !
It really seems like this is really light on real comparison points and information i.e. pros and cons of distro differences. You do an install, and mostly test things that are exactly the same. Only plugins are different. I feel like this is a good start, but it's just not really a comparison of these distros.
Great video ! I'm looking forward to pass on NeoVim to improve my efficiency but I used VSCode since the start (I'm a junior so it's not long ago) Do you think it's better to start with a NeoVim distributions or trying to configure it from scratch ?
Whether we're talking about nvim, plugins or just vim in general, we think it's best to start simply and expand over time. The problem with jumping into a config like nvchad or lazyvim is that you can get overwhelmed. You can get so wrapped up into trying to remember every keymap that it becomes frustrating. This is why we setup Neovim for Newbs the way it's done. We start simply and introduce new concepts in each episode so you have a better understanding of how it fits together. Having said that, we all learn differently! Do what makes the most sense for you. In our minds, Neovim for Newbs is the best way to start and really learn how these tools work together.
I agree, it is perfect for a beginner who wants to learn how to configure it, not just accept what someone else chose for them. That is one problem overlooked by using a distro as a total beginner. While it is important to start with a base you can work from, it is equally important that you be able to learn/understand how configuration works, which kickstart is perfect for. Distros obviously tend to enforce their own way of structuring the config, which can be rigid and not translate well outside of that particular distro.
Thanks for the great comparison! I would not have thought this could be done in a meaningful way in just shy over 10 minutes, but you really zoomed in on the hotspots. I tried all these distributions at some point, but in the end I started with kickstarter and heavily modified that, it has been months now since I felt the urge to change anything about it. (Well, it would be nice to get Kotlin debugging working...) I always get uncomfortable at some point when there is too much stuff I did not ask for explicitly, so the minimal approach feels best for me. I am thinking about even throwing more stuff out of my current configuration.
lunarvim: *installation is a oneliner with a few prompts* typecraft: ill give the installation half a hot dog how dare they force us to type y+enter 3 times. letsgo archlinux minimalists, we shall rule this wasteland
Weird thing that I didn't have any issues with astro plugin installation. This whole thing with repo gives a unified way to store your configs. I have my own repo with config
I tried astrovim few months back and just got stuck but then again i did not know what the hell I was doing and kind of stop using neovim but new year and tried Lazyvim and boom all works. I still dont know what I am doing but installing plugins and gettikg around seems smoother. Thks video also helped to not worry anymore and stick to Lazyvim untill I am all grown up and do my own setup hehe
Why do they all look like just... normal IDEs? So its either get nvim and add a vscode skin to it. Or vet vscode and add vim motions to it Though we can clearly see who has the better performance lol
The only thing that flat out stops me from just using a distro is literally the ability to pass a straight up keys = false from the top level and just disable allllll of the distros binds. If they gave that? I’d have zero issue just using a distro lol.
What is LSP used for ? Im kind of green to coding and just use my nvim config for corrections , line numbers, autoclosing brackets. I have only written in Python and bash before so Idk what the LSP would be used for
Honestly, if you're green to coding. Just use VS Code with Python plugin (or maybe there is build in support?) then you also have an LSP. This way you can focus on learning to code, instead of wasting time on configuring neovim.
I started with lazyvim, it’s was great except when I begin disabling things.., Then something occurred to me. Lazyvim just lazy.nvim, let’s learn this and pick what’s I like ! So thanks Lazyvim, maybe your internal function are a little too complex for me but thanks for the fish !
How did you struggle disabling things? The docs are pretty straight forward in my experience. I recently went to lazyvim from a custom config (using lazy.nvim) and it took probably 10-15 minutes to remove a lot of their plugins and keymaps and use my own.
Good video but I think it would've been more helpful if you highlighted the differences more since the video was basically repeating the similarities between them.
I think this was pretty badly designed and it's so superficial I don't really see the point. Sorry bad, but you're awarding 1 hot dog for simply having which key installed, something all of them have, and the dame goes for the lsp.
@@typecraft_dev I see it as like the "blue bell homemade vanilla" of distros. Not too complicated, you can do a lot with it, and it still tastes pretty good on its own
not very useful outcome, maybe interesting to someone new to vim and neovim but if you already familiar with vim this video fails to really compare these distros , yes they all use mason/whickey/lazy that's why theiir scores are the same. to make a useful comparison you have to dig deeper.
Don’t agree with the video. Lunarvim does a better job with installation, it just has some prompts but you can agree to all at the start. And adding plugins is the simplest, whatever new file you’re creating in lazyvim, lunar just has a section in the config to paste that. Finally, lunar doesn’t pollute your default nvim.
Nice video presentation. "Each criteria" doesn't make sense though. Each means one or a single item, so one can't use criteriA, because that is the plural form of criteriON. Thus, "each criterion" is correct.
IMO, LunarVim is the worst one. Running of the custom shell script doesn't look safe and doesn't allow multiple parallel configurations to play with. A lot of dependencies during the installation (for Windows platform it didn't work for me). But it has DAP from the box unlike others
I thought the whole purpose of the "shell script" is to separate it from your other nvim configs. And as far as I know, that works well or did work well in the past
I have used lunarvim for about a year and even contributed to it... and yes, it's the worst distro The reason is, it was the first neovim distro to be made and which was long before lazy.nvim even existed packer is great for a perosonal config, but not meant for a distro, lunarvim was trying to get around that limitations of both packer and neovim's api's with it's special apis That along with it's creator chris loosing interest and moved in to cripto stuff didn't helped either...
I had no trouble installing it on Windows. It lists all the dependencies on its website. The separate script means you can use neovim in its vanilla form, and lvim launches LunarVim.
What??? The narrator's title is about you're not having to try Neovim distributions, because he did, but at 1:54 he recommends the viewer to try each of these four Neovim distributions. That's a complete contradiction of the title. Oh, my goodness. What???
