The plugin that brings the “starter” / “welcome” screen when nvim is called without a file is mini.starter, a lua module of the mini plugin. My primary use case for neovim is closer to a feature complete text editor rather than a full fledged IDE, although there definitely is some overlap in my setup.

My set of plugins are roughly as follows

• vim-plug, I will likely replace this one with packer at some point
• goyo.vim and limelight.vim for distraction free viewing and editing
• nnn.nvim to integrate the nnn file manager into neovim
• mini.nvim according to the Github, “Library of 35+ independent Lua modules improving overall Neovim (version 0.7 and higher) experience with minimal effort. They all share same configuration approaches and general design principles.”
  • mini.surround feature rich surround actions
  • mini.statusline a very simple no-frills statusline
  • mini.starter aformentioned start screen
  • mini.pairs inserts the paired character, e.g typing ( will automatically place ) behind the cursors
  • mini.move move selections
  • mini.map has a little map of the file similar to VScode among many other IDEs & text editors
• barbar.nvim Tabbar plugin
• a whole bunch of LSP / autocomplete engines / snippets / git commit messages & signs
• nvim-treesitter for syntax highlighting

And the remaining things in my init.lua file are just keybindings, setting up the plugins, and disabling the swapfile etc. when editing my password secrets in gopass among other ‘secret’ files

It definitely is rather reminiscent of older Windows versions with the seperate application launchers, fully expanded task bar entries that show the name of an app that are ungrouped (until necessary). And the widgets are very reminiscent of Rainmeter.

But I also bring some things from macOS that I enjoyed such as the global menu on the top (sadly Firefox flatpak does not support), virtual desktops with the pager widget on the bottom, and I use Krunner a lot (plasma’s equivalent to macOS “Spotlight”)

I hope your switch to Linux goes well if / when you switch!

The other nice thing for “state funded media” is they often have translations for international audiences

For example CBC / Radio-Canada also have an international page, Radio-Canada International offered in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic etc.