prelude VS magit

> I forgot how absolutely horrible the new user experience is...

The bbatsov/prelude project was started in 2011 to help address that problem. I started using it not long after that, and it's been a joy to use ever since.

And by "started using" I mean I forked it on GitHub, stared personalizing, and then merging/rebasing from upstream ever since at my own leisure.

https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude

https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/

From 2011 to present, not everyone in the Emacs community feels bbatsov's Emacs Prelude makes the best/correct decisions, but given how long Emacs has been around and how large the community has been over time, what can you really expect?

It's certainly a lighter-weight starter kit compared to Doom Emacs and Spacemacs. (I'm not knocking those projects!). I've also looked at some of the newer starter kits mentioned in other comments here and previous HN threads; they seem okay to me, just reinventing a lot of the same "wheels" you'll find in Prelude but in a less refined form in many cases... such are the freedoms, joys, and trials of Free Software.

If I recall correctly, on my mac I had an issue with the meta and super keys. I had to rebind Meta to Cmd and Super to Opt. Im pretty sure I used Bozhidar Batsov's solution for this.

Another reason for you to stick to Emacs is Emacs Lisp. If you enjoy writing lisp you are not going to find a better piece of software written in any other lisp language. I prefer common lisp to elisp (alot!) but this is a fact in my opinion. Plus elisp is somewhat similar to common lisp and learning/appreciating the differrnces between the two will make you a better lisp programmer.

https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/blob/master/core/prelude-...

I have based my emacs config on Emacs Prelude from u/bbatsov, because I did not trust starting from vanilla emacs.

When some days ago I decided to use org-mode again, I didn't use Doom Emacs, and it was the best decision that I've made. Instead, I used Prelude, which is a very simple and powerful Emacs config, and it's much less opinionated than Doom Emacs and Spacemacs. Then I disabled the Prelude theme, and combined it with Nano-Emacs. Now I have a very simple Emacs config, which provides me with some of the best tools, and also a very beautiful and elegant theme. I can change everything I want very easily, customized it to my needs.

How do you know? You said you want "fully setup" :) Prelude? Spacemacs? Your own version?

Thanks :)… it was originally heavily inspired by Emacs Prelude, but has since drifted quite far from it.

Then the slowness that you're seeing is probably Windows-specific, and that's why everyone else is telling you that Magit is actually fast.

WSL might make things faster.[1] IIUC, the problem is that starting new processes is much slower on Windows than on Linux/Unix and Magit relies heavily on that. This seems to have plagued Git tooling more generally but maybe this got fixed since then.[2]

[1] https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/58444

[2] https://github.com/magit/magit/issues/2395#issuecomment-1710...

You'll want to invest the time in learning Magit, which will change your life once you get the hang of it (and I was a heavy user of Fugitive in Vim previously!), and it's unlikely you'll find a better integration with GDB anywhere else on the planet than with Emacs, though I can't say that empirically. You just need to take the plunge and start learning it, then cut over and take the hit in productivity one day when you're feeling adventurous. You'll ultimately become far more powerful than you've ever been. Especially if you delve into elisp over time. I use Spacemacs, which is bloated and has bugs, but it has so many features that I haven't undertaken the massive endeavor to replace it from scratch yet.

> Even in this article just a few sentences after stating we should start from first principles he then jumps into the assumption of the "desktop".

Agree. Although I can see how the idea of "first principles" can be a very difficult starting point. A blank sheet of paper is a scary monster.

There's a huge breadth and depth of non-"desktop" GUIs out there, some (like smartphones) are even wildly successful. It's good to explore them for inspiration. Some of my favourites:

- Arcan (https://arcan-fe.com/about/) - I won't attempt to summarize, just dive in!

- SailfishOS (https://sailfishos.org/) - mobile UI focused on interaction through gestures / swipes; I've used it as my daily driver for a couple years.

- Speaking of mobiles, classic Nokia UIs allowed you to navigate to a specific item in the menu by pressing the corresponding digit on the dial pad. Once you learned where a particular item is, accessing e.g. your SMS inbox was extremely quick.

- Apple Watch / WatchOS (https://www.apple.com/watchos/) - I've always loved the idea of a device where one of the primary interaction methods was a wheel/dial of some sort. The watch even gives you context-sensitive tactile feedback.

- ZUIs in general (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooming_user_interface) and the work of Jef Raskin in particular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_(software) - this is the guy who helped design the Macintosh, but his other work took a radically different route.

- Magit (https://magit.vc/). Many common git operations are reduced to a couple of keystrokes; the obscure features are more discoverable, and the cumbersome procedures (such as rebasing, or staging individual hunks) become simple and intuitive. Also check out transient (https://github.com/magit/transient), which is the "UI toolkit" that powers Magit.

This can be done most comfortably with org-mode in emacs. It offers a lot of features, and they all operate on plain text. There are also nice integrations for git and languagetool, but I guess those are less exclusive.

How does this differ from https://magit.vc/ ?

I would rather see innovative tools that lessen our dependency on 50+ year old tech. This is still a glorified teletype. It uses AI to autosuggest git commands? Contrast with Magit[1], which (while it has a tiny bit of a learning curve, but also nowhere near 23M in funding) actually makes interacting with git a pleasure.

[1]: https://magit.vc

Also was using Emacs (org-mode)[https://orgmode.org] for years with (Magit)[https://magit.vc] package for git. I feel org-mod is a precursor to Roam Research, Obsidian, et al. Hit the spot for years but I wanted editing on mobile so that’s why I’m here. :)