When comparing Antigen vs zgen, the Slant community recommends Antigen for most people. In the question“What are the best ZSH configuration frameworks?” Antigen is ranked 5th while zgen is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Antigen is:
Unlike oh-my-zsh, you just enable plugins and themes as required.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro No bloat
Unlike oh-my-zsh, you just enable plugins and themes as required.
Pro Can simply plug in bundles from github
Pro Easy to use
Loading plugins can be done with a simple command. A git url can be specified to load plugins without any manual configuration or setup. Packages and themes from other plugin managers can be loaded from zgen without the entire plugin manager being installed.
Pro Clean .zshrc
zgen uses an init.zsh to load plugins which means basic load commands can be used in a zshrc making it easy to manage.
Pro Fast startup
zgen has a very fast startup if configured properly compared to oh-my-zsh.
Cons
Con Slow
Implemented using e.g. forking functions returning via stdin, it is noticeably slow.
Con Reset required after plugin update
Because an init.zsh is used, if you load more plugins you must run zgen reset to reset the init.zsh. This can be done automatically in a .zshrc with the zgen saved variable.