Editor states - Evil or Holy modes

When installing Spacemacs you have the choice of using either Vim or Emacs as the default editor. If you select Vim you get all the Vim states and Emacs state too.

Using a mode for different types of actions greatly simplifies the keyboard bindings and arguably makes vim faster to use, especially once you get used to multi-mode editing.

This speed is in part due to simpler keybinding when in normal mode as you are not typing content into the editor, simply running commands with each key press. This means you can have single characters to do many of the common commands, eg l instead of C-f for moving the cursor forward.

If you are deeply connected to the with Emacs keybindings, then probably best to stick to holy mode.

If you are new to Emacs or you just want to take advantage of Vim, then select Evil mode.

Hint You can switch between Vim and Emacs states with C-z.