[zingar]

Interesting. I started on spacemacs and never left. My spacemacs is super pimped for the things I want. It feels like if I rolled my own I would end up with something like spacemacs, but not as good.

So I guess you and others here have had the experience of building something that was your own that felt better than the distro?

[fileeditview]

For me it was mostly that these distros overwhelmed me and I could not get into their code. I had to "start small" if you want. Also I encountered troubles regularly because some things did not feed my needs.

I am not saying they are bad, just not for me.

And I think they make it somehow harder to discover the true power of emacs: bending it to your will & basically forging your own custom environment, not only for editing but so much more (git, mails, pdfs,...).