I think the easy setup is exactly the reason Helix has taken off compared to Kakoune. It probably has the most simple onboarding experience I've had with any text editor. Things just make sense, and tools that should be built in are.

I think the philosophy of delaying the plugin system as long as possible is one of the reasons helix has achieved that.

With Helix I just have to learn selection first, and few different binds compared to vim. With Kakoune, I have to onboard into a more complex ecosystem, in addition to that. A lot of people already have vim/neovim config fatigue so that's not very compelling.