On: The Emacs Widget Library

[platz]

here's the total configuration required:

    (require 'evil)    
    (require 'evil-matchit)
    (require 'evil-surround)

    (evil-mode 1) 
    (global-evil-matchit-mode 1)
    (global-evil-surround-mode 1)
    (evil-commentary-mode)

judge for yourself whether this is too much work to paste into your .emacs

[SmirkingRevenge → platz]

Spacemacs does a lot more than provide vim key bindings and modal editing.

The biggie to me is discoverability, with it's pneumonic key combos, and integrating with packages like helm.

Even with evil, the vim semantics are often violated in special buffers, making for a rather disjointed experience. Spacemacs also does a lot to smooth out a lot of those problems.