Eliterate Emacs

The Eternal Yak Shave

Who am I?

Kevin, 32, U.S.A.
CAD drafter
Local government
Computers are neat
Doom Emacs

What am I talking about?

Non-programmer perspective
Provide insight
- Emacs as a playground
But can it run doom?
Anyone can do it

I’m not a programmer.

I’m a professional CAD drafter specializing in civil engineering, most specifically in stormwater infrastructure, river and floodplain management, and ecological restoration.

I’m the kind of software user who chases shiny novel things, that doesn’t take the time to understand what their doing before they start doing it, and will tinker with my tools until they break.

It might be difficult for the power users of doom to put themselves in the mind of someone who doesn’t have a good understanding of programming in general, let alone elisp, and what that means in terms of providing those people support. Being able to anticipate the problems the novice user might face can help you setup systems to help them without requiring you to answer the same questions in chat every single day. What kind of issues might arise if core contributors start to resent new users?

I’ve installed and used doom emacs on more systems then I can easily remember.

Windows 10 Enterprise, WSL1 and WSL2 Windows 10 Personal, WSL1 and WSL2 (triple boot) Windows 11 WSL2 with WSLg (triple boot) WSL distros Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE Ubuntu VPS Ubuntu desktop (triple boot) Manjaro (triple boot) EndeavorOS Arch Termux Windows Subsystem for Android

Finally, I hope that anyone who is interested in trying doom emacs takes the leap. I’ve managed to bungle my way into using doom emacs by being curious, breaking things countless times, and by lurking around the community of it’s regular users.

When did I Emacs?

It all started on the crisp winter morning of December 17th, 1992. Father was off in the war and mother was lost in a haze of laudanum. I was a quiet child…

The True Story

I think it was about 2-3 years ago
I liked linux
Never used it as a daily driver
First tried it over a decade ago
Always used nano or notepad++
First used Spacemacs

Why do I Emacs?

Notes

Work from home
D&D
Journaling

Task management

Work
Personal projects

System configuration management

magit
text editor

Programming

bash scripting
python scripting
discord.js

Experiments

elfeed
mu4e
hugo blogging
literate config

I’ve experimented with using doom as my tool for email, RSS feeds, and other odds and ends but so far it hasn’t become part of my normal routine.

I use emacs to use the emacs

yak shaving is the means and end
playground

I use doom emacs so I can get better at using doom emacs. For the last 2 years one of my main hobbies has been configuring emacs. I used to see emacs not as a tool but a toy. Any practical use that I squeezed out of it was a bonus. It’s less of a toy and more of a tool for me now.

Where do I Emacs?

WSL

WSL1 & WSL2
Windows 10 and 11
WSLg

I use Emacs on several different systems so my workflow varies.

For my job I have a desktop PC with an Enterprise version of Windows 10 that is on the Government update ring. For a long time I used Emacs within WSL1 and display it on an X Server within Windows 10. Now I’m able to use WSL2 which has been an improvement.

Under Windows 11 I’m using WSL2 with WSLg which allows for displaying a linux GUI on Windows without an X Server. Under the hood it’s a mix of whatever WSL2 is, a different linux VM using Wayland, and RDP. But I’m still using Emacs 28 with native-comp and native GTK even though the latter might be useless.

Ubuntu

VPS
Dual boot

I have VPS with Ubuntu on it that I used to remote into extensively and accessed Emacs via X-Forwarding. For almost a year this was my main linux and emacs environment.

At one point I was on my personal desktop that had Windows 10 using RDP to remote into my work desktop, then using WSL within that to ssh -X into my VPS. I used doom emacs via that convoluted system and by comparison having native emacs on a linux machine is wonderful.

Eventually I dual booted my PC with Ubuntu and Windows. Ubuntu never quite became my daily driver but I used it and inevitably doom emacs frequently.

Manjaro

Daily driver
Sway and Wayland
Lived in emacs
Literate config

Up until about 3 weeks ago I triple booted my PC with Manjaro linux and Windows 11. Manjaro was my first linux daily driver. I had the sway window manager and went Wayland native. Under Manjaro I’m using a mostly Wayland environment and have Emacs 28 with native-comp and native GTK.

Arch

Thinkpad Yoga 260
Emacs is always open
Use it everyday

I’ve used doom emacs to help me manage and configure this little laptop from the moment I got it.

Eliterate Emacs

The Eternal Yak Shave

Who am I?

What am I talking about?

When did I Emacs?

The True Story

Why do I Emacs?

Notes

Task management

System configuration management

Programming

Experiments

I use emacs to use the emacs

Where do I Emacs?

WSL

Ubuntu

Manjaro

Arch

FIN