emacs distributions without evil?

it seems that all major emacs distros come with evil. Is/are there any that just ship a better pre-configured emacs without evil?

You might look at [crafted emacs](https://github.com/SystemCrafters/crafted-emacs) and my own [lambda-emacs](https://github.com/Lambda-Emacs/lambda-emacs) (not sure if either of these are properly classified as "distros" though). Both default to vanilla Emacs bindings. The repo for lambda-emacs also has a bunch of links to some other great vanilla configs like Prelude, etc.

You can disable evil in doom emacs

Even those that focus on Evil (like Doom and Spacemacs) will let you disable it. But they also put a lot of emphasis on Evil-mode, so you might feel like you're not getting the full benefit. (Whether that would be an accurate impression is another matter and not one I mean to express an opinion on.) [Prelude](https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/) is one that isn't focused on Evil-mode. IIRC, it is available but won't be installed unless you explicitly choose to do so (same as Emacs by itself).

I wonder if people using Prelude uses/installs evil mode 🤔 I have vim keybindings way too deep in my muscle memory but I’m trying to learn emacs’ keybindings to see if there’s something better about them, although I wonder if it’s even worth it.

As others have said, Evil bindings are optional in Doom and Spacemacs, and they come packaged with a lot of other goodies that you can still enjoy. Apart from the ones already mention, John Kitchin's science-focused [Scimacs](https://github.com/jkitchin/scimax) is also an option.

Having gone through the process of setting up a custom modal scheme that keeps true to emacs keybindings, it's a hard comparison to make because of how fundamentally different the considerations are for modal editing vs non-modal. I think the two sets of keybindings really work best and are most intuitive in their respective contexts/editors. That having been said, once you grok what emacs means by 's-expression' in general contexts, that is a powerful identifier to have out of the box for both movement and especially selection.

These are not distributions … they are just configurations and by far the majority of us use something thats not one of these …

You will definitely benefit from gradually configuring vanilla Emacs yourself over time.

Yes, but there's also benefits to using a pre-configured Emacs in the beginning to lower the entry barrier. I'm not sure I would ever have gotten into Emacs without Spacemacs.

That something comes with Evil doesn't mean that you have to use it. E.g. you can use Emacs Doom perfectly fine with Emacs keybindings.

Your intended purpose drives which distro or config you chose, and whether one is even appropriate. If you want a text editor, then vanilla is fine. Likewise if you want to edit Language X. All the completion framework etc really is extra, and half the time you don't know what distros and configs are giving you, so you don't know what's vanilla and what isn't. That makes it even harder to customise a vanilla instance yourself later. People focus on the kitchen sink, rather than the editor, and that's not helpful to new users. It makes it seem like stock Emacs is hard to learn and use when it's not, and actually has some of the best built-in help, tutorials, and manuals you'll find. Install Emacs, run the tutorial, edit text. After you're there you can add the extra bits you need specifically for what you do.

You can disable Evil on Doom Emacs, by the way.