I tried Neovim Distributions so you don't have to

Ever since the creation of vim in 1992 by Bram Moolenaar, there have been countless attempts at packaging up vim with configurations, and libraries, to give it a little more polish. For me personally, I remember using the Janus vim distribution when I initially got into vim about 10 years ago. For the most part, these distributions have been fairly straightforward. A couple libraries here and there, a cool colorscheme, and thats about it.

But lately, with the emergence of Neovim, and fancy new lua based libraries. Neovim Distributions have gotten more and more interesting. I personally don’t use a vim distribution, but I am curious about them. I guess you would say I’m “distro-curious”. There are; however, a LOT of distributions out there. So In this video I want to evaluate the 4 most popular distributions. Namely, AstroNvim, lunarvim, NVChad, and LazyVim.

Chapters:
0:00 introduction
0:45 hot dog rating system
1:52 LunarVim
3:28 AstroVim
5:25 NVChad
7:12 LazyVim
8:37 final results

[jaydubyasee]

Another 🌭 you could add is "How easy is it to override a default setting?". This is where I struggled with all these distros.

[munzutai]

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 YouTube, 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.

[devabdul]

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)

[ChungusTheLarge]

Perhaps, the real Neovim was the Lua we learned along the way

[nikfp]

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!

[ryansmith]

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!

[jamesmackinnon]

I have found lazyvim to be great because when I made my own config I found it was pretty much just a worse lazyvim

[akillercaterpiller]

Great video. Your 4 categories were exactly what I needed to make my pick and provided a great way to see them all side-by-side. 4 hotdogs!

[sneakypython]

This video definitely deserves a Hotdog 🌭

[minecraft]

Astro improved a lot, completely redone the way they set up everything and adding plugins is very intuitive now :)

[StaffyDoo]

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.

[BorchKawki]

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 :)

[dungeon]

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

[flightman]

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.

[TheSast]

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.

[jds]

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.

[cazador]

The vidoe is nice and conscise, but I hoped for something a bit more in-depth when you teaed the video.

[thering]

I am 30 seconds in and already the chaotic energy has my chimp brain hooked

[rogersanctos]

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.

[ItsRyanStudios]

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