My Emacs Configuration (Dired)
eugene-andrienko.com
eugene-andrienko.com
If the editor ships a built in file manager, that file manager should not require explicit configuration to open e.g. a jpeg in an image viewer by default. We've had `xdg-open` for years now, it's kind of absurd how far behind emacs is in so many ways.
I believe opening within Emacs should be the default - as many Emacs users aim to do everything within Emacs.
See this submission from a day ago:
I believe it's actually only a very vocal, very misguided minority that tries to do everything in emacs. Emacs is objectively inferior to existing alternatives for:
- IMAP
- viewing and especially annotating PDFs
- Browsing the web
- working with LLM agents
- multiplayer text editing (crdt.el is trash)
- working with rich text documents like .docx
- working with spreadsheets
- notebook rendering (org vs md and jupyter are definitely a "worse is better" situation)
etc.
It is not sane to assume the user wants to do everything in emacs. Emacs is bad at lots of things and that's okay.
The point is that if Emacs ships with an image viewer, it makes sense for that to be the default. If KDE comes with an image viewer, you would expect it to be the default - even if it sucks. Ditto anything on a Mac/iPhone.
> Emacs is bad at lots of things and that's okay.
It's also OK to have it as the default. Emacs usage is not shrinking, and they're OK sticking to their philosophy as long as it doesn't impede future development (it doesn't, as the last 20 years have shown).
If, and only if, the user has emacs set in xdg as the preferred image viewer, then I agree.
Personally, on multiple occasions, I've been frustrated when upgrading some (non-Emacs) SW and have it behave differently because they suddenly decided to make using xdg the default and then having to waste time finding a way to revert that behavior.
This isn't a problem unique to Emacs.
I'm sure if Emacs seriously started losing lots of users, they'll change the defaults to attract some. Until then, the developers (and most chronic users) simply don't care.
That said, lack of sane defaults elsewhere is indeed a bit frustrating, (see: littering backup and auto save files everywhere. It would be much nicer to throw it in a ‘temp’ directory within .emacs.d or similar)
The thing most n00bs should be taught first is that emacs is self documenting. Hit c-h t (ctrl-h t) to get the tutorial. Hit c-h m to get documentation on the current mode you are in. Hit c-h k followed by a key (or key combo) to see which elisp function a key calls (even just normal letters call a function). Hit c-h f and then type a function name to see documentation on a function. Oh yeah, and hit q to exit any of those help documents and get back to the file you have open
Also, wgrep-mode for editing files is amazing
Emacs is amazing: I'm using it since the nineties and I've got quite the custom config. I've got zero clue has to what wgrep-mode is.
One dired/wdired feature I use all the time is to edit filenames by using multiple cursors. Either that or, as TFA mentions, keyboard macros. It's really powerful.
The author also has a blog entry about getting rid of use-package:
https://eugene-andrienko.com/2025-10-10-emacs-ditch-use-pack...
It's funny because my config is a half-arsed one where it's partially use-package and partially old-school config. It's an old config and at some point I move to use-package and now I moved back to "not use-package" but I mostly kept the part that are using use-package as-is.
I've got about 3000 to 4000 elisp config lines. And counting...