I have used emacs since before Linux and window systems existed. Emacs is a small windows manager like it is nearly everything else. Nowadays I only use a tiny fraction of its functionality, because I do run a window manager and a web browser. Still emacs is one of the first programs I install on every system. On embedded systems where emacs is not feasible I try to get remote editing via TRAMP https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode working.