EOS – Emacs Operating System | Hacker News Reader

EOS – Emacs Operating System

writequit.org

46 pointswhalesalad14 comments

I have tried to have a complete workflow inside Emacs (with Exwm) and I failed: it was too much hassle for me. I don't deny that it could be interesting and gratifying for the truly motivated, but I wasn't enough.

Now I am back to Gnome, and I think I'll stick to it for the years to come.

I had the exact same attempt, but it turns out remembering a bunch of keyboard shortcuts to do anything is really hard and frustrating. I use Vim as an editor. I thing there’s just a limit to what I can reasonably use day to day that requires memorisation over discovery.

I’m using Gnome too, after Emacs I like the lack of configuration.

I think a lot of people think you have to use crazy key-combos in Emacs because it gets compared to Vim so often, but you can get by fine with the very basic combos, mouse use and the minibuffer!

I mostly just use M-x to run interactive commands, and then use the basic C-x chords to save files and whatnot. I make really heavy use of interactive commands though, I find it easier to type "describe-function" into the minibuffer than doing the key-combo for it, for example!

Using the GUI Emacs interface can also help a bit with non keyboard driven interaction I think, since it provides buttons you can click and a context menu when you right click that changes depending on the modes and other things.

Anyways, my main point is that Emacs does not require a heavy keyboard/key-combo use style, and that you can use the mouse and the minibuffer to do everything you could with keyboard stuff.

I have a pretty bad memory and also use both editors. Vim was a lot easier for me because it has a great mnemonik system around its shortcuts: nouns, verbs and all that. I really struggled with Emacs keybindings because I could never make any sense of them and didn’t use Emacs often enough to make them stick.

This is what helped me:

- the help commands (obviously), where I can quickly look up what a shortcut does (C-h k) and which ones are bound to a specific function (C-h f) or variable (C-h v)

- the escape command (C-g) which helped me out countless times when I accidentally hit the wrong keystrokes

- keeping an “Emacs Journal” where I write down my most important commands with shortcuts, what I want to learn next, what I want to fix, research, etc. (I use my persistent scratch buffer for this and I also keep a Journal for Vim)

The point of an Emacs OS is not much in GUIs terms, and partially in workflow terms, the real point is: a damn unique OS witch means a single application, framework, where anything is just a piece of code in an integrated environment so you can see and change anything as you wish, or the classic idea of an OS vs the Unix and successors idea of an OS like a base-layer, apps as single small worlds etc.

Emacs OS main point, classic systems main point is: the environment must be a single desktop where anything is integrated because users have a single mind where anything is integrated...

Emacs itself suffer from a 50+ years old codebase and a development still alive but definitely far from the fast of the Lisp golden age, so it's normal that you have spotted issues here and there that demand too much effort to be sorted out, but the principle is the evolutionary key IMVHO we need in IT...

Unix violates it's own integration principles introducing GUIs where there are no unix IPCs behind cut/copy/paste and (pre-unix or) more recently drag&drop, that's why we keep using unix CLIs in 2022. Emacs offer a 2D/GUI unix CLI with "far better IPCs". That's the essence :-)

Emacs is a wonderful and very capable operating system. It's just a shame that it doesn't ship with a decent text editor.

What does this joke actually mean nowadays, when Vim, VScode, etc. have similar amounts of plugin complexity?

Nobody else seriously tries to set up their editor as an OS service, move in completely, and view the rest of the system with the disdain that Haskell people view side effects.

I don't know anyone who brags about using vim to check their email.

This is the first result on Google for "vim email": https://opensource.com/article/20/1/vim-email-calendar

The author also uses Emacs. The article consists of writing a bit of VimScript and downloading some plugins, in a way that is much like installing a plugin on Emacs. The old editor war was about if extensibility should even be in a text editor, whether was bloat. Since Vim can support this and has plugins like it used often, the real cultural differences Emacs appear to be dead.

they ship with decent text editors

> Vim, VScode, etc. have similar amounts of plugin complexity?

They don't. They are quite good, but those editors are not even close to as configurable as Emacs. It's orders of magnitudes different, even today.

For the past 20+ years, I've ignored Emacs because I chose Vim at the beginning... but only the past few months I've started to read about Emacs and now know what people mean. Emacs isn't "just an editor"... consider it a library of macros that you use to create your own editor!

This is really exciting, but a bit daunting to dive into. Are there any screenshots?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com