Moving from Doom to Vanilla

I'm considering trying non-doom emacs and wanted to see if my rationale makes sense. I really appreciate the work hilsner did making doom btw, I use it constantly I mainly use emacs for org mode and some light coding. I do use vim bindings. I'm on a mac With Doom I feel like there is a lot of extra stuff that I don't need or understand. I like the idea of building something from scratch that is leaner and fits my needs. Also, if I have a question, it's hard to know if it's a doom thing or an emacs thing. I would just learn emacs Does that make sense high level? Would it be a crazy amount of work to configure it to what I use emacs for now? I'm willing to do some work to get to a good place, but don't want to be stuck fiddling with it forever either. Is there somewhere that would be good to start from?

When moving to vanilla, I saved my .emacs folder to use for real work until I had a functional vanilla (I would move the folders back and forth after I was done with a session configuring my vanilla config ). With my vanilla config, I went one step at a time adding config for whatever bothered me most. It wasn’t long until I could work productively with my vanilla config.

Hard to guess what "some work" will amount to for you, but watch the Emacs From Scratch series on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEoMzSkcN8oPH1au7H6B7bBJ4ZO7BXjSZ. It'll set you well on your way. [Chemacs2](https://github.com/plexus/chemacs2) can also help you juggle multiple Emacs configs, so you have a productive environment to hop back into when you need it. In a nutshell, vanilla Emacs is perfectly doable, but it will take some time to figure out, and how much tinkering you'll be able to evade depends on how willing you are to compromise with features and polish. Getting from 0 to productive won't take long, but getting from productive to comfortable is a whole other adventure. Maintaining vim keybinds alone require a good deal of headache, but the journey can still teach you something. As an alternative: try disabling Doom's modules instead. I'd wager Doom minus its modules is leaner (and more vanilla) than folks realize. Eventually, I'll separate its core from its modules, then move many of its core packages out into modules. I hope that'll help dispel some of that confusion, but until then you get 90% there by disabling what you don't need, or simply replacing its modules with your own. Anyhow, good luck!

I think it makes sense for studying purposes. It can be fun and make you understand Emacs much better. With that said, I don't think it's a productive thing to do. Doom does a very good job in configuring Emacs with sane defaults, and its framework gives you freedom to customize everything you need and even things you don't like about Doom, all this while keeping close to the "Emacs way". Personally I have been using my own config of vanilla Emacs with evil-mode for, I don't know, about 5 or 6 yearss. Every now and then I like to try something new, and eventually I tried Spacemacs, which there's a lot of nice things about it, before but I personally didn't like its framework system, so I took some ideas off it and went on with my config. Until just last week I decided to try Doom and I fell in love with it in no time. I felt that I had been wasting my time maintaining my own Emacs config for so long when there was something like Doom around. I found very easy to migrate and I'm pretty happy with it. I don't plan on going back to vanilla Emacs.

I know this isn't part of OPs thread but wanted to say, thank you, good sir, for Doom emacs and the maintenance you put into it. It is fantastic!

Vanilla Emacs is not hard. Just start from scratch, add one thing at a time as needed and as you learn things. Make sure you understand everything in your .emacs, don't wholesale copy stuff without understanding it.

I also recently tried to make an emacs configuration from scratch, and i learnt a lot about elisp and the emacs plugin ecosystem. You can also try to do that, it really helps to learn more about how emacs works. But i switched back to doom emacs, I couldn't exactly set it up to my liking.

> But i switched back to doom emacs, I couldn't exactly set it up to my liking. “Patience you must have, my young Padawan,” says Yoda to Luke Skywalker.

Well, first: Emacs (and Doom) is free and open software. You can use it just to your liking. And you don't need to feel bad about it, whatever you decide. I my case, using Doom doesn't really hinder me in understanding things about it, I just read the source code of it's modules. I might however be an unusual Doom user: * years ago, I started with plain Emacs (with Emacs bindings, I hate modal vi keybindings with a passion. I always am at the wrong mode, I think. And the cursor sometimes behaves weird) * over the years, my config grew longer and longer * eventually I switched to literate config (keeping the config in a .org file) * but when I had a syntax error, it was always more cumbersome to find the error in my .org file than in my .el file. And when I later realized that my config isn't so good that many people read it, I reverted back to a normal .el file * instead I use commands that are picked up by imenu, and used helm/ivy/selectrum/vertico completion for imenu, so that I can quickly reach my place * then I learned about Doom, and it's quite fast load time * i tried it, but it had some things less than my old config * and this I started to adapt my old (and rather longish) config to Doom * and today my ~/.doom.d/config.el is 2523 lines long. I guess this is rather unusual for the odd Doom user. For me, Doom **is** "just Emacs". After all, I can use whatever Emacs provides. Would I say it's something special, then my own 2523 lines would also be something special. > I like the idea of building something Well, then just do it. And if you don't like the end-result, try it in a different way. Or go back. You are free, after all.

Just jumped ship from spacemacs this week. I like what I saw and thank you for the work sir!

Your rationale is exactly why I switched from Spacemacs to Emacs a while back; I felt like there was too much going on under the hood that I didn't understand and couldn't fix if it went wrong. I'm very glad I switched to vanilla emacs. My emacs still doesn't have as many features as Spacemacs did, but I actually know how to use them!

I can’t imagine using a pre made emacs it goes against what I enjoy about it. Doom is amazing though I steal from it regularly.

Well. It's a great choice. Good luck, man. I used Doom for a week and then I made my own config after watching some YT videos. I would say use chemacs and keep your original doom emacs and maintain a side-by-side your own config. And start making your config from scratch by adding and learning small small things everyday. Like firstly, you must learn how elisp works and how you can module system works ( I mean how you can encapsulate your init.el in many files). You can start of by removing `tool-bar`,`scroll-bar`,etc., then set your fonts. Yeah choose your theme (you can use your current theme too, all are packed in `doom-themes` package) and customize modeline (you might like `doom-modeline` as you're a doom user, it's also available as a package). After that you have to make choice which completion UI you would like to use (I like vertico). You also have to choose completion UI for CAPF(completion-at-point-functions, basically when vscode like thingy which you get when programming, bad-example but you get the idea). And here you're, you've a pretty minimal Emacs working. When talking about programming, you've to configure either `lsp-mode` or `eglot` (i prefer latter one, but it's about feature you like)and you'll get same functionality as doom as it also uses same under the hood. Now you're all set for your needs, you can get productive with this config. But to get comfortable with it, you have to learn how to make your own keybindings (I don't use vi keybindings but evil is great) and dwell a bit into depth of Emacs. Well, have a good luck ;)

Let me share my 5 cents as I went through the same thought process and tried it. As many pointed out, it's not that hard, you just need to know what you need. BUT! Is it worth it? I found it way harder than putting together, e.g., your own Linux install. Which (versions of what) packages work 100% stable and fast in what combination, there's a lot more going on than meets the eye. Especially when your config needs are a bit more complex, which I will assume for the rest of this post. To complement hlissner's comment, "some work" imo is way too much for people who need to work for a living and don't want to make emacs configuration their main hobby. I'm not a lisp pro, but I do like Emacs, if a package doesn't work as expected, what are you going to do? Depending on how complex your config/workflows are, you might run into a lot of trouble in places you don't even know yet. The final straw was that I believed my from-scratch config that really only contained what I needed must be faster, but when I gave doom emacs a shot again, it was faster to load, more responsive and stable. At this point I just gave up and didn't investigate further when I had something better off the shelf. This being said, as you know, config frameworks like doom emacs leave you many options to config yourself too, and as many pointed out don't hide things from you, so it's not like you couldn't skim that down as well. Bottom line, if you have the time, if you want to learn and the satisfaction of putting things together yourself easily outweighs all potential trouble, you know what you need to do :). If you don't want to test how troublesome figuring out why Emacs randomly freeze etc. can be and just want a great, stable, fast and responsive emacs config, hlissner's doom emacs and others are there for you (thank you hlissner!).

I was in almost the exact same position a few years ago when I made the decision to move from spacemacs to vanilla. I use emacs for pretty much the same things you do, including vim bindings. I am really glad I moved to vanilla emacs. I have it working pretty much the way I want now. It took a little tinkering, but I don't need to mess with it at all now. The best thing is that now I have a much better idea of how configuration works. Before, when I used spacemacs, when something broke, I could never figure out how to fix it. I would say go for it!

Use chemacs2 to have multiples configurations, so you can have a productive emacs (Doom) while trying to build one from scratch. > With Doom I feel like there is a lot of extra stuff that I don't need or understand. I like the idea of building something from scratch that is leaner and fits my needs. I felt the same with Linux distros when started using it, I found myself spending too much time removing things than working productively. Nowadays I use Artix and probably will switch to Alpine to go even more minimal. There are people that need to build things from scratch to feel comfortable, maybe you are one of those.

Yup. This is what I do now. Went from vanilla to spacemacs to doom and back to vanilla. It’s fun.

Yup. This is what I do now. Went from vanilla to spacemacs to doom and back to vanilla. It’s fun.

What were you not able to set to your liking?

I can give a second recommendation for chemacs2. I used it when migrating back to a vanilla config from Spacemacs and, simultaneously exploring Doom. It takes a little bit of set up, but makes switching between configs very easy.

I dipped my toe in Doom (and spacemacs), but I think I'll stick with Vanilla because it's just easier to know what's going on. It's definitely great to try these out so you can see just what emacs can be, but these all singing all dancing versions are just a bit too busy for me. Like you said it's also easier to get help with the classical emacs setup cause it's just so much more widely established.

Even if you still end up using Doom emacs in the end, you will learn a lot about emacs by following along with that series.

Vanilla Emacs can be a productive environment out of the box without any configuration. Try not using any configuration beyond https://git.sr.ht/~technomancy/better-defaults

Yas snippets, I wanted the auto complete to come up in company, but for some reason it didn't no matter what i did. Thinking now, it was probably because i needed a different backend, didn't know that company can only use a single backend at a time. But tbh doom emacs works really well, so i wouldn't want to go back to a manual configuration since it's too much work.

>As an alternative: try disabling Doom's modules instead. I'd wager Doom minus its modules is leaner (and more vanilla) than folks realize. Eventually, I'll separate its core from its modules, then move many of its core packages out into modules. I hope that'll help dispel some of that confusion, but until then you get 90% there by disabling what you don't need, or simply replacing its modules with your own. As much as I like Emacs, elisp and the philosophy behind it, I doubt I would use it if there was no Emacs Doom. It allowed me to be productive right away, and then tinker with it whenever I felt like it. It's hard to justify the time spent setting up the configuration for many different ecosystems when daily job requirements knock on the door. Thank you so much u/hlissner, what an amazing product you've built!

What worked for me was starting with https://github.com/susam/emfy - as it's very streamlined and she explain it line by line, them cherry-picking https://git.sr.ht/~technomancy/better-defaults So, growing my own brand as I use and study emacs and deleting what didn't fit my workflow anymore, from that inicial configuration.

Configuring from scratch is really not that big a deal, for a techy person at least. As u/hlissner said, getting from 0 to productive doesn't take long. Then you gradually make additions and changes as time goes by. If you had to learn how to do everything all at once it would be a nightmare, but you don't so it isn't.

Had the exact same experience/feeling with spacemacs a few years back. Here's a post I made in this subreddit late last year about building a minimal emacs config from scratch: [Your first taste of emacs](https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/qa6tgk/your_first_taste_of_emacs_the_beginners_guide_i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) . It's basically what I started with when I made the switch and then built it up from there. Hope it helps!

Welcome to the club. Hint: Version your .emacs e.g. on Github or Gitlab and expand further on it when tme goes on. Here is mine if you're interested: [https://github.com/maldun/emacs\_python\_ide](https://github.com/maldun/emacs_python_ide) A friend of mine and I maintain it together,

>Maintaining vim keybinds alone require a good deal of headache This is 100% of the reason why I switched to Doom when I started using EVIL after more than a decade of regular emacs - the thought of having to modify my entire config for vim bindings was too much for me, haha.

If you'd like to have a reference for a lightweight VIM/Emacs setup, checkout https://github.com/ideasman42/emacs-for-vimmers - for a commented configuration that gets you up and running without having to buy into a framework. Side-note, I don't use doom/spacemacs but don't have anything against them, just happy with vanilla.

I feel a little left behind, I'm old gray beard emacs user, started in the mid 1980's the vast majority of my emacs (and all day to day work) is on plain vanilla, pure text terminals. (Putty and sometime xterm) no GUI, very limited mouse support and due to security rules, no ssh pipes so have to stick to what plain jane terminal can handle. Frequently no 'OS aware' cut or paste buffers. So with no GUI, org mode which seems so popular is just an oddity to me. Yet despite all the restrictions on it, emacs has always been my 'go to' editor, even with zero customizations. (mostly editing bash scripts, /etc config files and user data) I wonder how many people here use emacs in such a stripped down way?

Mid 80s user here too. Org is very useful to me from the CLI and I don't think I ever use any GUI features of org even when I'm in a GUI. I don't know whether org would be useful to you, but CLI usage is not an impediment.

I went (from Spacemacs, and before that, lots of iterations of stuff - been on Emacs on and off since version 18) to vanilla, but what I landed on looked suspiciously like Doom and was much more work to maintain, so I went with Doom in the end. I think Doom is much lighter than Spacemacs, almost more an opinionated way of interfacing with Straight than anything else. But that might be because I agree with a lot of Doom's design decisions, and YMMV. I do think that every "serious" Emacs user should have used vanilla for a while. You learn a lot that way :)

Hi, thanks for all your hard work on Doom. I’ve been trying it out after using my own Vanilla config for a while now. I’m having trouble dealing with some of the org mode behavior (and stuff in Counsel as well) and have narrowed it down to some (defadvice!) blocks. Is there a way to remove this :override advice?

Certainly. `defadvice!` is just some syntax sugar around `advice-add`. Given a `(defadvice! X (...) :override Y ...)`, an `(advice-remove Y X)` will undo it. Though, I'd be interested in knowing which advice you're talking about and what issue you're having. Perhaps it can be improved (or it might reveal something else is the cause).

See, that’s what I thought, but I just couldn’t get it to work. I’ll be sure to reply again in a few hours with the details. I suppose it might reveal a few things. Pleasure to receive a reply from hlissner himself.

> Chemacs2 can also help you juggle multiple Emacs configs, so you have a productive environment to hop back into when you need it. This is great, thanks! I actually came to Emacs in December of 2021 and started with System Crafter's excellent video series. I've got a pretty good environment now, I'm mostly using it for org-mode and magit but I have started to do some coding in it. I've been wanting to try out Doom alongside my vanilla configuration to understand what I am missing. This looks like exactly the thing I need.

There's a possibility that the advice is deferred. I.e. Applied after some package is loaded. That means your `advice-remove` is being used too early. This applies to advice in the org module. Wrapping your `advice-remove` in `(after! org ...)` should make it work. E.g. ```elisp (after! org (advice-remove X Y)) ```

I think that it's just time consuming. I'm in my early 40s, busy work life, busy family life, hobbies, etc. I had tried and failed multiple times to make the jump into Emacs as a long-time vi(m)er (nearly 20 years now). The thing that really got me there was the Susam's excellent blog posts and efforts to socialize Emacs combined with the amazing series that System Crafter put out on building Emacs from scratch. I had to put a lot of time into reading, watching, experiment... Today, I'm feeling productive. I'm now much more willing to jump feet first into Doom, too, now that I have a solid understanding of the foundation.

So, here are the two internal Doom things I’m struggling with (similar situations). ## counsel-file-jump advice This piece of advice — `+ivy--counsel-file-jump-use-fd-rg-a` on I believe `counsel--find-return-list`, defined on line 285 of `/modules/completion/ivy/config.el`, I want to remove. That’s because with the `fd` command it uses only files under Git show up. I have a bind to use `counsel-file-jump` on my entire Dropbox folder, which works well on my own config despite the fact that only some of the files in my Dropbox folder are under Git. I tried: (after! counsel (advice-remove '+ivy--counsel-file-jump-use-fd-rg-a 'counsel--find-return-list)) but it doesn’t work — with and without the `after!`, and also evaluating the advice-remove manually. I also tried undefadvice! but haven't had success. ## Hiding properties drawers in orgmode Basically the same situation with an orgmode piece of advice. `/modules/lang/org/config.el`, line 665 - `+org--show-parents-a`. In orgmode I want the default visibility to be properties drawers hidden. With this commented out, when I reload org/first open a file the properties drawers are hidden (behavior I want). But I can’t seem to remove the advice. Now, this only sort of helps. In my own personal emacs config when I close my org file with my cursor below a heading with a properties drawer, and revisit that file, the drawer does not open. However, in Doom, even with the aforementioned advice commented out, closing and reopening the file under a heading will automatically open the properties drawer. In any case, I really want to use Doom, but I’m struggling to work around these internal changes to behavior. It takes a while to find the source of these issues, I basically had to bisect org’s config.el to find the offending piece of advice. Hope all this text isn’t too overwhelming, I wanted to describe my issue as precisely as possible. Thank you!

Writing your own config can be addicting though :) very fun too

Doom emacs changed my life. Thank you Henrik.

Like the other guys said, you don't need a GUI for org mode

> Hope all this text isn’t too overwhelming, I wanted to describe my issue as precisely as possible. Thank you! Not at all. It's hard to improve Doom without precisely this sort of feedback, let alone feedback so detailed. Thank you! > This piece of advice — +ivy--counsel-file-jump-use-fd-rg-a on I believe counsel--find-return-list, defined on line 285 of /modules/completion/ivy/config.el, I want to remove. That’s because with the fd command it uses only files under Git show up. I have a bind to use counsel-file-jump on my entire Dropbox folder, which works well on my own config despite the fact that only some of the files in my Dropbox folder are under Git. Ah, this is certainly a bug. I've pushed a fix for it in [https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs/commit/385e60cd26bda9cd5deaeb03f24484b18deea9d7](https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs/commit/385e60cd26bda9cd5deaeb03f24484b18deea9d7). But the reason your `advice-remove` didn't work is because the arguments in your snippet were reversed. It should've been: (after! counsel (advice-remove 'counsel--find-return-list '+ivy--counsel-file-jump-use-fd-rg-a)) > Basically the same situation with an orgmode piece of advice. /modules/lang/org/config.el, line 665 - +org--show-parents-a. In orgmode I want the default visibility to be properties drawers hidden. With this commented out, when I reload org/first open a file the properties drawers are hidden (behavior I want). But I can’t seem to remove the advice. That's an odd one. I tried to make sure `+org--show-parents-a` would function identically to `org-content` it overrides (that is, besides the one tweak the advice is intended to fix) but seems I failed. I'd like to fix that, however. Could you try throwing [this advice](https://gist.github.com/hlissner/a1578f0c7a8b931804aeaaafa87c69b7) into your config.el? It should "fix" +org--show-parents-a. If it doesn't work, I'll look into it further, but in the meantime you can get rid of the advice with: ```elisp (after! org (advice-remove 'org-content '+org--show-parents-a)) ```

> Basically the same situation with an orgmode piece of advice. /modules/lang/org/config.el, line 665 - +org--show-parents-a. In orgmode I want the default visibility to be properties drawers hidden. With this commented out, when I reload org/first open a file the properties drawers are hidden (behavior I want). But I can’t seem to remove the advice. Oh, I think I misunderstood the problem as the drawers were unfolded, but you're actually bothered by the fact the drawers are visible at all. For example: What you see with `#+startup: showeverything`: ``` * Heading 1 Hello world! ** Heading 2 Text goes here *** Heading 3 More text goes here ** Heading 4 Some more text goes here ``` With `#+startup: show2levels` *without* the `+org--show-parents-a` advice: ``` * Heading 1 [...] ** Heading 2 [...] ** Heading 3 [...] ``` With `#+startup: show2levels` *with* the `+org--show-parents-a` advice: ``` #+startup: show2levels * Heading 1 Hello world! ** Heading 2 [...] ** Heading 3 [...] ``` The purpose of the advice is to expand the parents, up to the target level. If Heading 1 includes a drawer, you see: ``` #+startup: show2levels * Heading 1 :PROPERTIES: [...] Hello world! ** Heading 2 [...] ** Heading 3 [...] ``` Which is correct, given that is how a subtree looks when they're unfolded. Anyhow, I've pushed a fix in https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs/commit/aed2972d7400834210759727117c50de34826db9, which should resolve your issue.

## counsel-find-file That commit seems to have *mostly* fixed my issue with using `fd` for `counsel-find-file`, thanks! Maybe one further suggestion would be to allow customizing the arguments used? Hiding it away in that file I don’t love. In my case, I don’t want to see hidden files… I’ve got 1757 more results using Doom than my personal config thanks to all these `.git/objects/....`. For now I’ll just use the fixed `advice-remove`. Thanks. Feeling silly for that one. ## org content That `defadvice` block you gave did not help. Functionality is the same as default (as far as I can tell, that is). The `advice-remove` works. Thanks for that. **and so does the new commit — saw your comment while writing this reply** What’s weird, though, is that it still sort of reverts to old behavior when reopening the file, I guess because of however you’re saving the cursor’s position when the buffer is killed (`save-place-mode`?). That is, if I load the file for the first time, place my cursor under a heading with a drawer, kill the buffer, and reopen it, that drawer will reappear. Or, I guess another way of putting it is, if I restart orgmode with my point under a heading, the drawer will appear. Not so outside of Doom. You’re right in your reinterpretation of what I meant by visible/not visible. Thanks again, let me know if there is anything more I can test/help with. I’ve been digging through the org module’s config.el and man, is it big. Impressive, but difficult…

> What’s weird, though, is that it still sort of reverts to old behavior when reopening the file Yeah, that's save-place-mode. It's doing what it was designed to do. It's not enabled in vanilla Emacs (why you're not seeing it outside of Doom). You can disable it globally with `(remove-hook 'doom-first-file-hook #'save-place-mode)`, or only in org-mode with `(setq-hook! 'org-mode-hook save-place-loaded t)`. > In my case, I don’t want to see hidden files > That’s because with the fd command it uses only files under Git show up. These seem like they contradict, but perhaps I've misinterpreted again. Without the `-I` argument I recently added, `fd` shouldn't list only tracked files. I can't reproduce otherwise, in any case. The only files it's configured to omit are gitignored files, which was the correct behavior (and I think I was too hasty in reversing that), but before I go reverse that, I'd like to better understand what kind of files it's omitting for you.

>Yeah, that's save-place-mode. It's doing what it was designed for. See, I'm not so sure about this — I use save-place-mode on my own config ([github.com/jakebox/jake-emacs](https://github.com/jakebox/jake-emacs)) and don't get this behavior. As for fd, I can explain a bit more In any case having control over the flags would be a nice feature. Is there a better place for these reports/conversations to happen other than Reddit comments? Is there somewhere you prefer? Github issues, Discord? I'll write up a little report. Thank you very much for your receptiveness and help so far.

Discord would be best. Doom has a [discord server](https://doomemacs.org/discord). > See, I'm not so sure about this — I use save-place-mode on my own config (github.com/jakebox/jake-emacs) and don't get this behavior. If save-place is not revealing a hidden subtree, a difference in installed Org versions could explain that. Doom installs the latest (9.6-dev). But the built-in org is often much older (9.1-9.3, iirc). Anyhow, we can dig into it on Discord.

Great, thanks. Re the counsel-file-jump advice, I tried my hand at making the behavior I'd like to see and made a PR, sent the link to it in #contributing and can chat there. I'd also like to investigate that org behavior. Maybe I will upgrade my own to 9.6-dev.

Do you guys have separate branches? I enjoy perusing peoples' configs, maybe taking a few lines here and there, but sharing a config with another person just seems wrong to me.

I do small adjustments locally. It's easier this way as merging online can become a pain in the ass. You can see it more as a collection of configs and ideas.

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I'm in the same boat, but thinking to start out with something like [Prelude](https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude). I want to learn Emacs more deeply the Emacs way, by using the default keybindings instead of Evil. Has anybody here have tried `Prelude` and going to an Emacs keybindings world from an Evil world?

Thanks for sharing. I'll check it out. I need evil though. I started out with VIM..