ditching vim bindings is taking a step backwards.

Vim bindings are objectively both more productive and more ergonomic. So use evil mode anyway (doom emacs has it by default)

I can’t give you a details 1:1 migration guide since I’m trying this myself and still don’t know some stuff about emacs.

1. Doom is pretty good, start with it
2. Forget about other emacs stuff like email, irc client, games, wm, etc. Focus on editing and development part
3. Emacs has “modes” which are not like vim modes (insert, visual, normal). They give you new “abilities” that are related to that file or buffer you are working with.
4. Expect emacs to be much slower and more laggy than Neovim

After more than 10 years vim I switched a couple of years ago to emacs, using the vanilla key bindings. I didn’t have much trouble. Just like with vim, you have to invest some time to learn basic editing commands.

Start using emacs and slowly learn more for you important key bindings.

Switching to emacs is worth the investment of time. Vim is an editor, emacs is a system and kind of a Lisp machine.

Grab Doom Emacs, it has evil-mode very well integrated and the space bar leader key setup should come natural.

I’ve used Emacs for a while now (since '89 or so) but had to learn vi really well as I spent most of the ‘90s on all sorts of Unix machines that invariably had vi (or ex, and ed, of course) and never Emacs, so I got to appreciate the friendliness of the modal model of interaction over Emacs’ use of lots-of-modifier-keys. I think it’s more ergonomic, even though it’s not always perfect at times, so I use a mixture.

Oh, and swap Ctrl and Caps Lock. That Caps Lock key has no business sitting where it sits on the PC keyboard, that’s what you get when a typewriter factory starts building computers. Thanks, IBM. For Emacs especially I feel it makes the modifier combinations a bit easier on the left hand.

I came from vim, but the emacs shortcuts felt more natural gradually, and I never got into evil-mode too much. It did take a bit to be completely comfortable.

You can always check what a key does by C-h k, which is useful throughout.

Evil-mode exists and it’s beautiful.

Big caveat here: emacs was always my primary editor, and while I’ve used vim to a more-limited degree, I haven’t put the kind of time into it to have me personally aiming to reproduce vim UI stuff. So this is not from personal experience.

My suspicion is that trying to switch over all of emacs to vim-style conventions is going to be a chore. Like, there are definitely packages that do some of that, but they aren’t going to do 100% of emacs and all of its package library.

However, there are people who do do a lot of this. My understanding from skimming things like /r/emacs on Reddit has been that Doom Emacs is a popular way “big makeover” to go for vimmers.

The core, most-modern package for vim emulation—there have been several packages to provide vi-like and vim-like behavior—is evil-mode.

Sure! The first thing you’ll need to know is that :qa! is how you close without saving, haha. …wait, you want to migrate “from” vim!!! [recoils in horror]