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Comment by juped | Hacker News Reader

Emacs is an operating system, not an editor; I'm really not sure why Stallman constantly promoted the "emacs vs. vi" meme.

You might as well try to switch from Notepad to Linux. It's just a type error, and you'll have a bad time.

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> Emacs is an operating system, not an editor

what does it take for this tired and false meme to die?

Why do you think it's false?

Emacs is an interactive lisp environment with at text-oriented interface. Text editing is simply another lisp program that manipulates the interface to work well for this specific task.

Emacs also has a built in email client, RSS reader, IRC client, calculator, file browser, web browser, markup language, regex DSL, Vim emulator, terminal emulator, custom elisp based shell, interactive REPL that works for several programming languages, and probably at least 200 more things that I don't even realize exist yet.

I think this makes it much more than just a text editor for sure. I don't know what you want to call it but operating system doesn't seem too far off the mark even if it's a little hyperbolic.

> Emacs also has a built in email client, RSS reader, IRC client, calculator, file browser, web browser, markup language, regex DSL, Vim emulator, terminal emulator, custom elisp based shell, interactive REPL that works for several programming languages, and probably at least 200 more things that I don't even realize exist yet.

Chrome and Firefox also have all this stuff, but I don't see people trying to conflate a web browser with an OS. See the difference between ChromeOS[0] and Chrome[1].

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeOS

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome

Chrome has an elisp interpreter? Details?

Sure here's one https://www.programiz.com/python-programming/online-compiler... and I'm sure you could find hundreds of others :)

That's not In chrome friend.

Then most of these things are not in "emacs" since most of them are packages and not builtin. That was my point. Emacs is insanely customizable through packages, and can essentially run anything. Chrome and Firefox and any other web browser are also insanely customizable through "packages" which you just so happen to download as soon as you enter the URL to the "package" you want, which we really refer to as a web app. But, that doesn't make the browser an OS, and it doesn't make emacs an OS either.

One you run in emacs, the other you run on someone else's computer, I guess my expectations were mismatched.

Emacs is neither an OS nor an editor, but it’s closer to the former than the latter. It’s probably most accurate to describe it as a framework (and bundled programming language) for building custom IDEs.

Ok, it doesnt have a kernel full of hardware drivers or an implementation that runs on bare metal. That said, it covers a lot of userland and things otherwise covered by a Desktop Environment (which are often conflated with OSes). In terms of application hosting, window management, low-level system control, etc. and the fact that some brave souls have had success with running emacs as PID 1 means that it's not a million miles away from being an OS.

(And that's without the inevitable implementation of some basic OS functions in elisp by various wizards)

> or an implementation that runs on bare metal

There's https://github.com/whily/yalo apparently

    (global-set-key (kbd "M-<tab>") #'completion-at-point-using-chatgpt)

I am an emacs user, but sometimes I do feel like it isn't a meme. If you could give me a linux kernel that just boots and interfaces with emacs, I am pretty sure it would cover 90-95% of my computer usage cases. Essentially emacs is an OS that just lacks a kernel. And in a way it is a compliment, Emacs is so much more capable than just as a text editor.

Making a new account to post a pithy pedantic negative reply is usually a indicator of irl issues that need to be addressed. The parent is not wrong in his point that comparing vi to emacs is the proverbial apples to oranges. They are different types of tools

> Emacs is an operating system

Reminds me of an old joke: "Emacs would be a great OS, if only it came with a decent text editor..."

Not an operating system, more like a desktop environment.

A single threaded OS. I remember that sometimes I launched a slow process in emacs, and then can do nothing but wait.

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