Turn Emacs Into A Window Manager With EXWM

[@TheBlueThird]

Vim is a text editor. Emacs has a text editor.

[@keedt]

ed is the standard text editor

[@TheBlueThird]

@@keedt Yup!

[@haidermirza3674]

And you are Rust

[@rouxgreasus]

​@@keedt ?

[@keedt]

@@rouxgreasus it's a meme. look it up. have a nice Sunday.

[@LeonidBraynerMyshkin]

You forgot to use Vim inside EXWM. That would be mutual ownage.

[@DistroTube]

Richard would have a heart attack if I did that.

[@thehellbox5016]

You can launch built-in shell and launch vim there, without EXWM

[@greatsaid5271]

@@DistroTube 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@kendawg_mcawesome]

Hey Derek, I just wanted to add that there is one key disadvantage to using EXWM. Because of Emacs single-threaded nature, it's susceptible to being locked if a program it's managing locks up, and when Emacs is your WM, that means your whole system is locked.

[@DistroTube]

Yea, I'm not crazy about that.

[@derekw6811]

Big point

[@AndersJackson]

Well, you get about the same in Wayland if a program locks. It is more like MS Windows then old X11 behaviour.

[@GrotesqueSoulthorn]

"War is mass murder, taxation is robbery and emacs is just a text editor writ large" - Murray Rothbard

[@aren8005]

@@AndersJackson Is that true? I didn't know that. The more I read about Wayland the more it seems like a pointless regression. What exactly is wrong with X11; it's very fast, stable and perfectly secure if configured properly... People love endlessly reinventing the wheel :-)

[@tennisfreak312]

The church of emacs: "We got another member"

[@AndersJackson]

Always nice to see people enlighten. If you don't see the light, then you can still use nano or whatever you want.

[@Clutter.monkey]

Praise St. iGNUcius!

[@David-pz4gy]

now replace the whole kernel with emacs

[@superscatboy]

I would definitely install EmacsOS on a VM for the meme value.

[@censoredterminalautism4073]

soon or eventually.

[@Vincent_Morrow]

In evil mode it's vim too...

[@patrickpippen9596]

@David Nah replace the whole kernel with GNU/Hurd

[@aryakiran256]

GNU/Emacs_OS

[@TheFakeVIP]

I'll have to see how well this works with Emacspeak and Orca. This could make a killer accessible distro for the blind.

[@bahathir_]

If we want to use GNU Emacs as full operating system, we can boot directly into GNU Emacs.. by altering init option during GRUB boot.. add init=/path/to/emacs/executable and enjoy, GNU Emacs as operating system..

[@Eliotime3000]

That's how The "Stallman Way" works.

[@replikvltyoutube3727]

EXVM is a weird way of saying ratpoison

[@iskamag]

What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, Emacs/Linux, or as I've recently started calling it, DooM EXWM + Linux.

[@bahathir_]

@@iskamag To be accurate, the OS is the GNU EMacs. So, if someone asks me, what OS which I am using? I may answer "GNU Emacs" , because it also can be applicable to other kernels. IMHO. Thank you.

[@iskamag]

@@bahathir_ I was thinking of saying Emacs/OpenBSD but thought Linux was funnier.

[@ThePandaGuitar]

I just learned about Emacs and the Doom distribution after years of fiddling around different IDEs and man, mind = blown. What took me so long.

[@mitchelvalentino1569]

Never stop with the emacs content, DT! 😃

[@wizdude]

This was the video we predicted you would do two weeks ago :-) Another fine production here DT. Keep up the sensational work. If I ever need to know something about Window Managers, and especially minimal Window Managers, I just come and search your channel for the solution, example and implementation.

[@censoredterminalautism4073]

StumpWM is lighter if you set it up properly (with the most recent version of SBCL), but I like EXWM a lot more by default. One of the most unique window managers out there, since it makes everything work more uniformly and makes Emacs always immediately available. No need no open Emacs to do something, because it's always there.

[@rubix4716]

I've actually been using this for the past year. I love it so much.

[@bobgrimes8618]

Last night I installed awesome on endeavorOS following your videos. You’re a great teacher!

[@kendawg_mcawesome]

When I asked when the EXWM video would be out I didn't realise the answer was "tomorrow".

[@bandithedoge]

just a heads up, if you're using doom emacs, don't install exwm through the built-in package manager. add it to packages.el instead to have it updated with the rest of doom emacs.

[@SenthilBabuji]

😀😀😀 Derek is becoming an Emacs extremist.

[@bogdanlupu3679]

Doom will fall upon him . 😉

[@wintermute701]

and that's a good thing

[@SenthilBabuji]

@@wintermute701 I don't know about that. I still feel xmonad is far superior than exwm. May be for someone who don't want put lot of time learning a new languages, a new WM, Exwm may be a better option. Emacs has its own flaws. Emacs does not have true multi threading and some emacs packages are not written very well. I don't want my WM to hand when Emacs hangs for one thing. Also the Exwm experience is not that great yet. Some of the packages like hydra don't play well with exwm. Though I am an Emacs users, I understand it's cons too and I know when not to use it. An extremist on the other hand may feel they can use it for everything. Not good!

[@jackdavidson5863]

emaxtremist

[@AndersJackson]

@@SenthilBabuji I have used Emacs as shell, and no, I do prefer to run eshell och shell in Emacs, and not Emacs as a shell. And still, I think I would use Xmonad today, but I am to old an lazy to change that. :-)

[@censoredterminalautism4073]

I just remembered an obscure window manager that you can cover. It's CLFSWM. Not very well known at all, and it's pretty interesting. It will be confusing at first, but it's really cool. Basically, everything in the window manager is a window (so instead of workspaces you just make windows inside of windows, and windows can be in more than one place at once). I think more people should be aware of it, because there are some nice ideas for other developers to steal there.

[@theemacsen1518]

Few months later, "I'm using Vim again"

[@wizdude]

And a few months later, "Today I'm going to show you how to use NANO as a Window Manager running under Arch"

[@MyAce8]

he's going to switch over to using emacs as his DE, but he's going to use vim as his text editor lmao.

[@TheMostTruth]

Like it! I knew about the functionality previously, but this might tip me over the edge to set it up on one of the laptops!

[@ShubhamBhushanCC]

Emacs is a way of life.

[@zack_teo]

I believe the right way (at least the way that allows doom to make some optimisation - not sure if it entirely matters to exwm) to config exwm is actually putting (package! exwm) in package.el and wrapping your configurations in config.el like (use-package! exwm ....)

[@michaelchalupiak7272]

DT you should do a follow up on the awesomewm video. The thing I'm struggling with when it comes to twm is the extras that come with a desktop environment. Theres so many things you dont realize your de does for you, stuff like network manager and oblogout, most people new to standalone window managers wont know about any of that, I know I sure dont. Itd make a great video

[@AnonEMoose-mr8jm]

A window manager? Its the whole operating system.

[@KSPAtlas]

There's even an init system in Elisp (although it still depends on sinit)

[@etherweb6796]

Props on Doom emacs - close enough to vanilla and way faster than spacemacs - liked spacemacs, but it takes too long to load, and it's configuration feels way further from vanilla emacs

[@eyadsibai]

Amazing! Looking forward for your feedback about it after a while

[@gopimeister]

I've setup i3-bindings on my exwm user - not only do they work great for navigating external programs, but also text frames.

[@fabioramatis2373]

The church of emacs welcome you

[@user-pc4i8ege55]

BTW, regarding xrandr, did you ever try working in portrait mode? As an avid book reader, I find it incredibly comfortable. Now, when displays are large enough to contain more than a hundred characters even when rotated by 90 degrees, most apps, including Emacs, terminal, browser, chat - virtually anything that deals with text rather than images - is easier when you can see more short lines.

[@coced]

SouthPark: Rob Shneider is a stapler ! DistroTube: Emacs is a window manager !

[@iLLt0m]

"The most important command in Emacs is the exit command." This is getting out of hand.

[@AndersJackson]

For a beginner that is important in any program. Like in vi(m).

[@Lee_Adamson_OCF]

Just the mere idea of EmacsWM makes me want to punch myself in the face repeatedly until I fall asleep. :P

[@Lee_Adamson_OCF]

(This message brought to you by VIM gang.)

[@robsku1]

I wonder - I noticed that you have a gopher site as well and tried to load it with Lynx, but it didn't manage to connect to it; just out of curiosity, I gopher intrigues me... So I'm wondering is something wrong with my Lynx or has something happened to your "Gopherhole"?

[@b0t_papa]

I was waiting for this

[@fuseteam]

so this is one step closer to an emacs distro :p

[@machman23]

Cool, nice one Derek, thanks..

[@maxxcan]

your best video ever!

[@CODOnlineInfoCODChina]

It would be interesting if you could take a look at TTOS Linux specifically because they're the only Linux distro that I found that ships GNUstep as one of their desktop options and I would like to know your thoughts on it because it looks really unique and quite different from other DE/WM.

[@AndersJackson]

GNUStep is different, as it is based on NextStep. I used to use it a while a long time ago, and i really liked it. But now, I am to old to bother. :-)

[@grim.reaper]

I love these videos!!

[@Fe123.]

how to use and configure org-roam?

[@AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Derek.

[@shuwan4games]

finally it has happen I personally love using EXWM

[@AndersJackson]

Bother to share your configuration, or is it like this one in this video?

[@shuwan4games]

@@AndersJackson sure thing I just have to actually push it to github

[@shuwan4games]

@@AndersJackson Ill get it done in the hour

[@shuwan4games]

@@AndersJackson well my plan was cancelled so here github.com/shuwan4/shuwan4emacs

[@nevoyu]

Emacs Plus systemd plus GNU plus Linux That is the whole stack one would need when exwm finally gets wayland support.

[@sanderd17]

So you can run vim in Emacs? Emacs has a decent editor after all.

[@Polaris64]

I tried EXWM a month or so ago and I really like it, however I had some problems. Firstly, I didn't find a way to get new X windows to open automatically in a split. If you use `C-&` to launch an application then its window replaces the currently displayed buffer which is fine as I can create a split beforehand. However if that X application in turn creates its own X windows (e.g. a file manager opening a file) then this new X window replaces the file manager. I'd like a way to have this second X window open in a new window/frame by default, which is more like a traditional tiling WM. Secondly I really like the concept of the simulation keys, but I couldn't find a good way of using Evil's key bindings to control the window while still allowing for text input. I ended up disabling line mode pass-through and defaulting all windows to char mode when first opened, and then swapping to line mode whenever I need to control them, but this seems inefficient. I'm curious to see how you get on and if you see the same problems. Hopefully you'll manage to find a nice solution!

[@robertdavis9948]

Just a guess, since I have never used exwm, but I'd say that C-x 4 s-& would launch in other window (split). That is the emacs way, e.g C-x 4 C-f is find-file-other-window.

[@Polaris64]

@@robertdavis9948 Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give that a try. However the problem isn't so much with `s-&`, it's when another X application opens another X window itself. This replaces the buffer containing the parent X window whereas I'd like it to open a new window and show the new X window there. So for example, I could use your suggestion to open a file browser in another window/split which is fine, but then if I opened a file from that browser another window/split would not be created for the new X window, instead it would replace the file browser.

[@robertdavis9948]

@@Polaris64 You can remap commands so that all the regular commands (e.g. find-file) are replaced with their windowed counterparts (e.g. find-file-other-window). Though I still think I am not grasping your problem exactly, maybe the link below will help. I apologize if I am misunderstanding. www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Remapping-Commands.html

[@Polaris64]

@@robertdavis9948 No need to apologise, I'm glad for the help! I recorded a short video demonstrating the behaviour: kzbin.info/www/bejne/haW3c42LmNVlms0

[@censoredterminalautism4073]

Use Emacs as a daemon if don't already DT. Then to access it in the terminal, use emacsclient -t (I use my e alias for that), and to use the GTK version, emacsclient -nc. The terminal version doesn't behave exactly the same way, but there are only a few minor differences (the only annoying one that I encountered being that if you have evil-mode enabled, you can't tab in org-mode if you aren't in insert mode in the terminal, while in the GTK version it works fine. Some packages don't work in the terminal version, but only aesthetic things (like the org bullets), as far as I know. Nothing that you really need. Of course, this is kinda redundant with EXWM (with that, you only need Emacs itself and the Emacs version of dmenu), but with xmonad it would be useful.

[@f-104starfighter7]

If you look at his xmonad config then you can see that he starts emacs daemon when xmonad starts

[@beatboy6690]

yea emacs is an amazing operating system. All it lacks is a good text editor

[@kjakobsen]

Sct Ignucius approves.

[@aq8877]

Next video: turn emacs into an electric car

[@Ateshtesh]

There is an extension to get salad deliveries from emacs

[@JasonSHPang]

How do you configure your pacman to show your repo/packages and the version change?

[@OuyangSecurityDept]

That's awesome.

[@davidvogel2387]

Thxs DT, great intro. Better to add exwm to packages in your doom.d/packages. FYI: Jethro Kuan aka org-roam maintainer runs exwm on a nix backend on doom-Emacs with std. Emacs keybindings github.com/jethrokuan/nix-config

[@davidvogel2387]

Which also brings up the topic of NixOs and Nix pkg mgr. IMHO a video could be great content for your channel

[@klauseverwalkingdev]

@@davidvogel2387 He already did a video about NixOS. He didn't like the exotic way to install it. But it deserves a "re-review" :)

[@fearlessspider]

Cool :) I love emacs :)

[@marcin6386]

Crazy stuff

[@Eliotime3000]

Say hello to the Stallman Way.

[@FreeMan-wz3hj]

Can you launch other programs in it? Like firefox, mpv, etc.

[@spencerallen323]

yes

[@egonbraun]

Funny to see community throwing stones at projects like systemd when it violates the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it right, but when Emacs tries to become a whole operating system people think it's awesome.

[@shuwan4games]

Those are different people, those guys think emacs is bloat anyways

[@poudink5791]

Yo, have you perhaps heard of the term "irony"? I know you seem to have very incomplete knowledge regarding humour, sarcasm or really anything that isn't just delivered straight, but bear with me for a second there. Believe it or not, it turns out very few people (or in fact a grand total of zero people) are using emacs as their daily driver operating system. You see, it's simply been passed around as a "joke" that the feature creep emacs suffers from constitutes an attempt at making an operating system, so people decided that, for "fun", they would try to actually implement parts of an operating system into emacs because it would be "funny". Yeah, blew my mind too, but that's not even the wildest part. You see - and I will fully admit that this is only conjecture on my part - it may be that some people would consider this to be significantly different from systemd, a very serious project used by a majority of large Linux distributions and thus a majority of Linux users, rather than a "joke" operating system that people use for two hours tops because it's "funny". These people would say that your comment showcases you either "purposefully completely missing the point", "engaging in dangerous false equivalencies" or "genuinely being a complete imbecile". I, of course, wouldn't dare accuse you of such things. All hail our systemd overlords, as they say!

[@linuxramblingproductions8554]

There different groups and most people complain about systemd because its kinda forced upon most users where you have to choose to install emacs yourself

[@egonbraun]

@@linuxramblingproductions8554 Interesting point! So the biggest point of pain is that they don't give you the ability to choose what init system you can use in your distro or make it quite hard to change. Could it be that this is because supporting multiple options for something like this would raise the development/support complexity? Again, thanks for alerting me about this. I haven't realised about it. :)

[@linuxramblingproductions8554]

@@egonbraun probably yes development complexity. another issue is packages artix for instance has to have there own custom packages because some packages from arch repos will break and have systemd as a dependency even if they don’t actually need it because package maintainers just assume everyone uses systemd. Thats not to say there isn’t distros that don’t use systemd other init systems like devuan artix and gentoo exist but those are very niche distros. If you look at the top twenty distros almost every single one will have systemd as the only option and options with other init systems usually have a higher barrier to entry and are not as well supported.

[@elinars5638]

A vim plugin as a window manager when

[@Iscreaman23112]

I have configured EXWM some, but this is still a very messy/active work in progress: gitlab.com/iscreaman23/dotemacs/-/blob/master/init.org I also stream emacs config and lately doom eternal (go figure) on twitch at twitch.tv/iscreaman23 Always happy to learn/explain what I'm doing to others who want to learn :D

[@theevil24a]

only saly a word "wow" Richard stallman is defintly a god

[@themule8625]

could you do a video of configuring elfeed in doom emacs, I've been having trouble trying to get it set up.

[@kennymccormic7578]

jokes aside, is it really useful? does anyone use it on daily basis? whats pros/cons?

[@fuseteam]

next up vim as your window manager 🤪

[@fuseteam]

@Kuriz, the plural being 'Kurizes' oof

[@Hyperboid]

wait, we can have emacs in emacs now!

[@MichaelMantion]

You forgot Step 1. sudo timeshift --create

[@benjaminbrady2385]

Why is emacs vs vi a thing? I prefer vim as a text editor but that's not all. I prefer firefox as a browser over emacs and st as a terminal over emacs. It really isn't a competition between text editors: it's competition between one coherent but bloated program which can do everything vs a set of many programs with different controls but minimalist in their goal to complete a single task. tl;dr emacs shouldn't be considered a text editor and ergo the emacs vs vi debate is useless

[@alecstewart212]

While I don't disagree Emacs has a lot more features than most people need, I don't find that Vim is the most magical solution. Vimscript is shit, you still have to apply loads of different options for Vim out-of-the-box to feel decent, I find the whole plugin ecosystem for Vim to be abhorrent, I find most of Vim plugins attempt to get the functionality that already exists in Emacs, if you hate Vimscript them you're righting plugins in Python/Ruby/Lua/Javascript, frankly Vim doesn't do much of a better job with "muh Yoonix filosophy" than Emacs does (getting Vim to interact with outside tools in a sane manner is a pain in the ass sometimes, in part due to Vimscript), `:help` isn't always that helpful, the API's documentation is too minimal, Vim still suffers from handling large files in some cases just like Emacs does, and the amount of "advanced users" are outweighed by everyone who uses Vim just to be cool. That's not to say I have loads of issues with Emacs, but frankly Emacs can do text editing well. It's just everyone installs Evil and then never learns the base functionality of Emacs. But in all honesty, I don't really care. The world of UNIX editors is basically everyone scrambling to make the not-at-all-sane out-of-the-box editors look like IDEs to look cool, and pretending that some of us don't miss using IntelliJ or Visual Studio because we didn't have to go down the rabbit hole of constantly editng configuration files with them.

[@MichaelMantion]

hmmmmmmm. I am not going to give you the attention you crave.

[@benjaminbrady2385]

@@alecstewart212 sure but that's the claim that emacs is a better text editor than vim. My point is that emacs isn't really a text editor per se so I don't understand why there's a rivalry between it and another text editor. I use neovim with no plugins as a minimalist solution to be clear so I think that is the Unix philosophy being upheld; then I also use many other programs for different tasks where emacs could replace all of them, including neovim. I don't see why it's still a rivalry between emacs' text editor aspect and another text editor, people could just as easily argue over its window manager aspect (as shown in this video) and another window manager such as xmonad, dwm, etc. As a single text editor I wouldn't think it's worth it because it's a big program for just that one tool; as a multitool for any task however, I would think it is a pretty great choice. You could replace all of your programs with just emacs if you really wanted to. I'll reiterate then: why is there still a rivalry between emacs and vim as text editors?

[@nonenothingnull]

Kind of a meme, if it can freeze it all up with a work-ful lisp function

[@madceee]

some people get it even to make it their boot system after runit for now

[@d1namis]

8:30 YOU BLOODY CAN'T USE VIM in a video about EMACS! How dare you!

[@klauseverwalkingdev]

LOL

[@faerryn8708]

8:30 sudo vim if you have $EDITOR=vim, sudoedit this lets you keep your non-root vim configs!

[@vvawarc]

yea b-but why?

[@EffToyz]

StumpWM!

[@marioschroers7318]

Now's the time. I feel I'm ready to give DOOM Emacs a shot. All your fault! 😀 EDIT: I did it!

[@whyeddy9702]

emacsOS

[@aliencreation8744]

cool

[@igorordecha]

>systemd is too bloated! Its against unix philosophy! There should be one program that does only one thing! >So anyway, emacs is now my window manager, terminal [...] and from time to time text editor

[@shalokshalom]

And systemd is actually very modular and can be used for one thing at the time, read: 0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths

[@NeuwDk]

My emacs config is loosely based on Uncle Dave’s Emacs : github.com/daedreth/UncleDavesEmacs . I use dmenu with exwm, and I think it’s pretty cool

[@auntiecarol]

@ T3:36 -- opens an el file in vim. 'nuff said.

[@buckithed]

Shoulda shown vim in a terminal in emacs

[@aneurisma2046]

damn I want his xmonad configs

[@32gigs96]

Wtf is it with you and wm’s? Damn son, I just use manjaro XFCE and have hot keys to different workspaces. Alt tab is great when you have 2 tabs per workspace

[@zeocamo]

emacs hotkeys super+s+shift+7+ctrl+x+h+d and you move one char, that is why i been with vim for 18 years and never move on

[@night_h4nter]

Well, it's not THAT bad AFAIK, but I still think pushing so many buttons, while being mnemonic, is a bit dangerous for the user's wrists.

[@robertdavis9948]

Incorrect. vim is all about jotting all over the screen character by character, while emacs is about narrowing. Everything in emacs is centered around narrowing down the section you are working on quickly. Narrow, make the edits, then widen. Ooooo let me "j" 20 lines, then "l" 30 characters so I can change that to a lower case A. Or C-s "search for term to narrow" C-s till ya hit the one ya need, enter, then C-u, then go on about your business.

[@KSPAtlas]

@@robertdavis9948 fun fact: vim has search too so you can do narrowing too

[@macgeek21]

the joke is emacs is a great OS thats missing an editor.

[@VixieTSQ]

Emacs kernel emacs kernel

[@DistroTube]

I've HURD about that kernel.

[@Ateshtesh]

@@DistroTube Wow! could you try Hurd some day? maybe DebianHurd or ArchHurd.... would be amazing, there is some amazing stuff you can do with Hurd

[@ChimbzZ]

Google search 😱

[@chrishayward3520]

Here's my 100% literate Doom Emacs config github.com/chayward1/braindump/blob/master/doom-emacs-configuration.org

[@Insane430]

i never asked for this

[@anantgupta7916]

Editing emacs file with vim

[@AlucardNoir]

WHAT!? No, no, no. The jokes says EMACS is an operating system that lacks a text editor, not a DE. Get your jokes right DT. Jokes are SERIOUS business.

[@bahathir_]

# Put emacs full screen emacs 0fs

[@rickbhattacharya2334]

Emacs is a meme it's not a text editor

[@g-manchanel1710]

I chated with my acquaintance about this... Maybe you will spy on me more... gentle?

[@usrname1105]

FiRsT

[@jmjl2]

F

[@DistroTube]

It's unfair!

[@jmjl2]

@@DistroTube yes in tablet or on adsl is bad for lag reasons

[@thenextpoetician6328]

Picking nits, but that's life: ampersand, not ampersign.

[@Ghfvhvfg]

For fun buld ideas emacs/gentoo login manager and done.