emacs-slack VS exwm

Emacs (which can be run in the terminal using the "-nw" option) has a slack package -- I dipped my toes in and noped out quickly, as I found it too difficult and too ugly compared to using the app: https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack

I've tried to do the same thing: going completely text mode. For me, it was disastrous -- it was a big distraction for me at work, at two jobs. I even left a good job partially so that I could try to go text-mode rather than click my way through lots of GUIs. It was something of an obsession. Now I look back and sigh.

I love the focus the terminal brings, besides the solid benefit of scriptable and automation that’s not possible with most GUI apps.

I’ve recently rediscovered emacs and now use it as my primary tool for development. I already loved working in the terminal for git and xcodebuild so it’s felt natural.

Moving editing and workflow into emacs has been great so far. I’m already customizing things. Even using eshell! Excited to look into other things like a music player or email app. Or even slack [0] like the author!

[0]: https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack

The developer has been missing on GitHub since 2020 [1]

[1] https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm/issues/845

There have been tiling window managers based around Emacs before. I think the most recent I tried was https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm -- in this case the window manager is itself emacs, and your windows are buffers in emacs etc.

It makes a lot of sense, since Emacs does its own tiling, and one is usually familiar with the keystrokes already, and then you don't have tiling in tiling.

So I keep meaning to go back and try this again, or something similar, but I recall it having issues with a lot of my commonly used applications back when I tried it.

When I get in the tiling mood, I use regolith, which is a nice packaging up of i3 in with the gnome environment. I'd love to have something like that, but built around emacs.

The tools I use for living inside Emacs are: - EXWM as window manager https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm - mew for e-mail https://www.mew.org/en/ - org-mode for calendar and todo-list https://orgmode.org/ - terminology as shell/terminal (before it was xterm, but wanted transparency) https://www.enlightenment.org/about-terminology.md - elfeed as rss-reader https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed - hackernews for Hackernews-reader https://github.com/clarete/hackernews.el - browser eww and Firefox - pdf-tools for viewing pdfs and in mew they are converted to text view

I do the following things in Emacs: window management, window management, file management, web browsing, mail, streaming music, chatting, shell management, version control, and life organization.

WM: EXWM Emacs X Window Manager

In the case of Arch you could take a look at https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm

EXWM is a full-blown tiling window manager for X11 that runs in Emacs. I've been using it for years. It's kind of difficult to get going, but I'd never switch back now.

Suddenly, I have that uniformity and consistent experience everywhere, and only a single configuration language to learn and use to get things how I like them.

If you like both emacs and tiling window managers, I strongly recommend it.

[0] https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm