> A common refrain is that Emacs is an operating system (OS). This isn’t true, but what invites comparison to an OS is its ability to orchestrate applications and utilities above the OS kernel level.
Only because Lisp Machines, or variations thereof didn't took off in the mainstream.
Even if LISP machines took off, an editor running on them still would not be an OS. Such claims come from people who don't understand what a platform is and who can conflate any platform with an operating system. You also see these people calling web browsers operating systems. By this flawed definition you could even call things like Roblox an operating system.
One of the pivotal moments in my career has been when I used Emacs just enough to truly understand what "Emacs is an operating system" means, not just as a joke but as something I could believe in
But you already had an operating system and you could already code... Did Emacs really give YOU any capability you didn't have before? Don't forget this is a text editor, not an IDE or some general purpose automation harness
You could add lisp to mspaint and mspaint suddenly becomes awesome somehow? I don't follow the logic
It certainly did for me, because it let me trivially write code that integrates deeply into the rest of the system.
A simple example: I wrote a function that let me highlight an X.509 cert in a YAML document, regardless of indentation, and pass it to 'openssl x509' to show me what it is. This has saved me lots of time over the years not having to copy/paste, fiddle with whitespace, etc. But it's only valuable because the functionality is now right at my fingertips in the environment I'm already in!
The Emacs API is kinda huge, with things like very raw network API, a very good approximation of fork/exec process management, buffers as the base communication mechanism with a lot of capabilities, various utility function with regards to interfacing with the user (windows, frame, faces, keyboard events), then the hooks and advice subsystem.
With Unix, most programs are binary and while the shell is a good glue language, you can’t alter a program and the OS that much. With Emacs, only the core coded in C is sacred, anything else can be modified to fit your workflow. And there’s a lot of packages out there to provide you with raw materials.
I've been on spacemacs.org for a while, but since I've got a Keychron G6 Pro where I can reprogram the caps lock, I'm going to try out some hard-core init.el stylings.
I also started on spacemacs but then I wanted to learn the basics of it and switched to writing my own configuration from scratch.
What helped me the most is reading though the Mastering Emacs book by Mickey Petersen which is an amazing resource to learn the basics and beyond.
Right now I'm in the process of reducing the number of external packages I use and I'm trying to use more of the built in functionality that is available "out of the box".
I did not get this argument. Diagrams are nice, and I probably missed something in lisp code (not used to lisp syntax), but I see no argument that Emacs has more service-like interaction with other apps or its plugins than say vim or vscode. I agree that emacs is the most OS-like, but I would love if someone explained what exactly is the point in the article
I see shell as an instrument through which you use other tools. In that sense, vi feels much more like a shell, because you have to use other standard unix programs with `:.!` for much functionality.
Where Emacs comes with all bells and whistles included in one big distribution, much like an operating system.
> A common refrain is that Emacs is an operating system (OS). This isn’t true, but what invites comparison to an OS is its ability to orchestrate applications and utilities above the OS kernel level.
Only because Lisp Machines, or variations thereof didn't took off in the mainstream.
"Symbolics Lisp Machine demo"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk
"Emacs and Lisp"
https://funcall.blogspot.com/2025/04/emacs-and-lisp.html
While Emacs was forked by Lucid as XEmacs to make one of the very first ideas of LSP, nowadays most features have been integrated back into Emacs
https://dreamsongs.com/Cadillac.html
"Lucid Energize Demo"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQQTScuApWk
Even if LISP machines took off, an editor running on them still would not be an OS. Such claims come from people who don't understand what a platform is and who can conflate any platform with an operating system. You also see these people calling web browsers operating systems. By this flawed definition you could even call things like Roblox an operating system.
"An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one"
-- Dan Ingalls
In the Linux world, isn't the c compiler necessary for Linux to function?
To build? Sure.
To run? Absolutely not.
Developers love building on platforms. Saying there shouldn't be platforms defies reality.
Edit: Looking up the quote it seems to just be the person being pedantic in how they define operating systems.
Came across this recently, which I find is a good and short intro to Emacs for people who don't use it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJZDmO5yOxE
One of the pivotal moments in my career has been when I used Emacs just enough to truly understand what "Emacs is an operating system" means, not just as a joke but as something I could believe in
But you already had an operating system and you could already code... Did Emacs really give YOU any capability you didn't have before? Don't forget this is a text editor, not an IDE or some general purpose automation harness
You could add lisp to mspaint and mspaint suddenly becomes awesome somehow? I don't follow the logic
> Don't forget this is a text editor, not an IDE or some general purpose automation harness
It's more correctly a Lisp execution environment with a text editor added as a bonus ;)
A lisp interpreter with text editing primitives.
It certainly did for me, because it let me trivially write code that integrates deeply into the rest of the system.
A simple example: I wrote a function that let me highlight an X.509 cert in a YAML document, regardless of indentation, and pass it to 'openssl x509' to show me what it is. This has saved me lots of time over the years not having to copy/paste, fiddle with whitespace, etc. But it's only valuable because the functionality is now right at my fingertips in the environment I'm already in!
The Emacs API is kinda huge, with things like very raw network API, a very good approximation of fork/exec process management, buffers as the base communication mechanism with a lot of capabilities, various utility function with regards to interfacing with the user (windows, frame, faces, keyboard events), then the hooks and advice subsystem.
With Unix, most programs are binary and while the shell is a good glue language, you can’t alter a program and the OS that much. With Emacs, only the core coded in C is sacred, anything else can be modified to fit your workflow. And there’s a lot of packages out there to provide you with raw materials.
I have been using emacs for the past couple of years. Started because I wanted to try out org mode and stayed for the extreme flexibility it offers.
I've been on spacemacs.org for a while, but since I've got a Keychron G6 Pro where I can reprogram the caps lock, I'm going to try out some hard-core init.el stylings.
Suggestions welcome.
I also started on spacemacs but then I wanted to learn the basics of it and switched to writing my own configuration from scratch. What helped me the most is reading though the Mastering Emacs book by Mickey Petersen which is an amazing resource to learn the basics and beyond. Right now I'm in the process of reducing the number of external packages I use and I'm trying to use more of the built in functionality that is available "out of the box".
Nice.
I'm going to go through https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs as well as https://www.masteringemacs.org/
I did not get this argument. Diagrams are nice, and I probably missed something in lisp code (not used to lisp syntax), but I see no argument that Emacs has more service-like interaction with other apps or its plugins than say vim or vscode. I agree that emacs is the most OS-like, but I would love if someone explained what exactly is the point in the article
It's a shell not an operating system but the concept of a shell isn't commonly understood.
I see shell as an instrument through which you use other tools. In that sense, vi feels much more like a shell, because you have to use other standard unix programs with `:.!` for much functionality.
Where Emacs comes with all bells and whistles included in one big distribution, much like an operating system.