Spacemacs
Ranked 2 of 6 Emacs distributions by recommenders
Recommended as a ready-made Emacs setup that works well out of the box and suits beginners. Caveat: it can break on updates or with custom packages.
Recommended as a ready-made Emacs setup that works well out of the box and suits beginners. Caveat: it can break on updates or with custom packages.
41 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 24
- criticize it
- 17
- approval share
- 59%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 24 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Good starter kit for beginners
“If you want something that “just works” which you can experiment with and gradually learn more about over time, then you might get more mileage out of spacemacs.”
Comment from 1 Nov 2025 in “Ask HN: Where to begin with "modern" Emacs?” “some other distro like Doom Emacs or Spacemacs or stuff like that, if they are after a better out of the box experience”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Even More Batteries Included with Emacs” “I think everyone beginning Emacs should start with Doom or Spacemacs and optionally build their own config later on.”
Comment from 1 Nov 2025 in “Ask HN: Where to begin with "modern" Emacs?” - Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “I have officially retired from Emacs”
- Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “I have officially retired from Emacs”
- Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “How I am deeply integrating Emacs”
Works well out of the box
“If you want something that “just works” which you can experiment with and gradually learn more about over time, then you might get more mileage out of spacemacs.”
Comment from 1 Nov 2025 in “Ask HN: Where to begin with "modern" Emacs?” “some other distro like Doom Emacs or Spacemacs or stuff like that, if they are after a better out of the box experience”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Even More Batteries Included with Emacs” “distros like Doom Emacs and Spacemacs offer [a better out-of-the-box experience]”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Even More Batteries Included with Emacs” - Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Rebasing in Magit”
- Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “Julia Snail – An Emacs Development Environment for Julia Like Clojure's Cider”
Vim-style bindings via evil mode
“Spacemacs, which has excellent Vim-like modal key bindings”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “VSCode rebrands as "The open source AI code editor"” “I combined with Vim bindings, spacemacs interface”
Comment from 14 Mar 2026 in “Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI” “Run spacemacs in 'evil mode' so you can use Vim!”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Rebasing in Magit” Discoverable with which-key and fuzzy matching
“spacemacs nails the discoverability aspect through helm-Mx-fuzzy-matching and which-key”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven” “It's discoverable, extendable, quite consistent.”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Emacs Is a Lispboard”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Breaks on updates or custom packages
“Spacemacs is kind of bloated and easy to break with custom packages which are not part of original build”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Even More Batteries Included with Emacs” “I constantly had to deal with installing a package and discovering that it broke some unrelated LSP”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Even More Batteries Included with Emacs” “my early experiences also felt like upgrades were really hard to deal with and often breaking”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Even More Batteries Included with Emacs” - Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Even More Batteries Included with Emacs”
- Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Even More Batteries Included with Emacs”
Complex and hard to customize
“modernizing frameworks like Doom / Spacemacs only add to the complexity”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “"Plain text has been around for decades and it's here to stay." – Unsung” “You can use doom/spacemacs but they hinder future customizability”
Comment from 10 Oct 2026 in “I tried to move my notes out of Emacs. I failed. Again” “the whole setup was too complex for me, so I failed”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Emacs, how it all started (for me)”
Other Emacs distributions people recommend
The four most recommended other Emacs distributions, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doom Emacs | 60 | 23 | 72% | 11 | 1 yr8 owners | Approved |
| SpacemacsThis page | 24 | 17 | 59% | 10 | — | — |
| Emacs Bedrock | 21 | 1 | 95% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Emacs Solo | 7 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
| minimal-emacs.d by James Cherti | 6 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 49 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I had such things happening only with Spacemacs in a VM running on a Windows host and blamed Spacemacs.”
“You can use doom/spacemacs but they hinder future customizability”
“Start from emacs and make something like doom emacs or spacemacs”
“spacemacs nails the discoverability aspect through helm-Mx-fuzzy-matching and which-key”
“It's discoverable, extendable, quite consistent.”
“I use Spacemacs in holy mode, which is spacemacs with normal emacs key bindings and not vi modals”
“My spacemacs is super pimped for the things I want.”
“the whole setup was too complex for me, so I failed”
“Both Doom and Spacemacs work fine without the vi bindings.”
“Doom Emacs and Spacemacs are both very good”
“but both feel far removed from vanilla emacs.”
“my early experiences also felt like upgrades were really hard to deal with and often breaking”
“I just tried to update all my packages and my emacs is now somehow broken”
“breaking on update for me with depressing regularity”
“some other distro like Doom Emacs or Spacemacs or stuff like that, if they are after a better out of the box experience”
“distros like Doom Emacs and Spacemacs offer [a better out-of-the-box experience]”
“Spacemacs is kind of bloated and easy to break with custom packages which are not part of original build”
“I constantly had to deal with installing a package and discovering that it broke some unrelated LSP”
“bounced off of spacemacs because it was all very unfamiliar and confusing”
“Doom emacs and Spacemacs are both good starter kits to give you an idea of what you could do.”
“Spacemacs is great for beginners, for people who don't want to deal with learning Emacs native bindings”
“Spacemacs is the same old Emacs with some out-of-the box customizations atop”
“modernizing frameworks like Doom / Spacemacs only add to the complexity”
“I've had three jobs since then and I brought basically the same editor config to all three jobs.”
“I spent considerable time with Spacemacs as well as evil-mode in my own config”
“I combined with Vim bindings, spacemacs interface”
“which have more sensible default appearance configs”
“Run spacemacs in 'evil mode' so you can use Vim!”
“The base Spacemacs config works well, so I never had the need to tinker with it.”
“It works well, but you can run into extra prompts if you open the same buffer from two layouts”
“Emacs and Spacemacs are slow, but do not slow me down.”
“there were a few pain points that I can no longer remember”
“The best plugin for Emacs for me is still Spacemacs”
“Spacemacs, which has excellent Vim-like modal key bindings”
“IMO, they're a great way to get started without having to invest too much time up-front”
“distributions which disable the menu bar are bad, distributions which use an edgelord dark theme are bad”
“Fell out of love with it after a few years and moved to pen and paper bullet journal.”
“I think everyone beginning Emacs should start with Doom or Spacemacs and optionally build their own config later on.”
“If you want something that “just works” which you can experiment with and gradually learn more about over time, then you might get more mileage out of spacemacs.”
“an easy way to see what packages other people find useful and how to use them”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.