9 ms·

Zero to Emacs and Org-roam: a step-by-step guide on Windows 10

186 points by nanna 6y ago

clircle 6y ago
It's funny that I've been using Emacs on windows 10 for years, and I would say that my work flow has only about 5% in common with the stuff in this repo.
- intrasight 6y ago
  You mean your org-roam workflow? Or Emacs in general. I'm asking because I was just reading about org-roam and plan to try it out.
- nobiot 6y ago
  Author here. Would love to know what’s the common 5% and the major differences.This guide was written with a complete beginner with no programming background in mind (myself 5-6 years before includes). I think veterans’ wisdom and experience can help rookies a lot.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Merman_Mike 6y ago
I spent a couple weeks reading docs and tweaking my Emacs setup. One day I launched it and my config was completely gone. I just gave up at that point.
- vincent-manis 6y ago
  I gave up on Windows long ago.
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  As in, your config file was deleted off your disk? That seems concerning in general, not just for Emacs.
  - Merman_Mike 6y ago
    I'm using a Mac. I don't actually know what happened. Some cursory googling found 10,000 other, but similar, problems with Emacs so I just gave up hope. I was using Doom, so I assume there was some issue loading Doom.
    - BeetleB 6y ago
      It's extremely unlikely that Emacs would be at fault. Doom, perhaps. And as everyone else has said, you definitely want to back up and version control your Emacs config. Most of the power in Emacs come from customizing it to your needs, and without it you'll lose much of your workflow.
- bitwize 6y ago
  Better to give up on Windows. As a HAL for your real OS -- Emacs -- Windows is pretty bad.
- lovecg 6y ago
  I store .emacs and other dotfiles in Dropbox, I’ve seen other people have been happy with Github as well. This way you get synchronization across all devices and backup; and your entire configuration process is pointing to the location of the file.
- klibertp 6y ago
  Hopefully you learned to version control your config files after that...
intrasight 6y ago
Since I didn't know what it was, I looked it up. Org-roam: A plain-text personal knowledge management system.
- narag 6y ago
  Is it related to org mode? Or does org mode support non-text information too?
  - bobuk 6y ago
    org-roam is a solution for effortless non-hierarchical note-taking with org-mode. Basically, if you already using org-mode - it's a personal wiki-like system for your files.
  - stinkytaco 6y ago
    Org-mode supports attachments and links to external documents. So I can create a file link or use org-attach to connect a file to an entry. Org-roam has some additional integrations like cataloging references specific URLs or bibtex references.
  - ska 6y ago
    IIRC correctly, it's built on top of org-mode, with some tweaks toward use as a "knowledge graph"
- felixr 6y ago
  I think the two systems you need to know are: 1) https://orgmode.org https://orgmode.org 2) https://roamresearch.com/ https://roamresearch.com/ Combine those two and you get org-roam
kidman007 6y ago
As someone who is an avid emacs user and had to switch to windows with my last job change, this is super helpful. I’ve already got my own org-mode note-taking process, but I struggled quite a bit with other quality of life features on windows. This article is a great resource on getting spelling, docx exporting, and other quality of life configurations.
- nobiot 6y ago
  Author here. Thank you for your comments. Glad the guide was useful to you.
marrone12 6y ago
I'm on windows now and have been using emacs through WSL. Do people tend to prefer the native windows version or not?
- GloriousKoji 6y ago
  I prefer the windows version. It respects all the native graphic elements of windows like font hinting, high dpi and and transparency better and I can drag and drop from explorer into it. It's also nice that I don't need to start WSL and an xserver to get it going.
- jaaron 6y ago
  I definitely prefer WSL. I've found this article to be one of the better on setup of that environment: https://elecming.medium.com/the-ultimate-emacs-hacking-tutorial-in-windows-10-wsl-2-cfd3ea3893e3 https://elecming.medium.com/the-ultimate-emacs-hacking-tutor...
- BeetleB 6y ago
  I've run it on native Windows for the last 10 years. magit sucks, but everything else works fine.
ojnabieoot 6y ago
Do any friendly folks here have advice about shell choices in emacs on Windows 10? Using MSYS typically works well enough for me for simple commands, but I always have a separate Powershell window open for more detailed work and actually running my compiled binaries. Generally I have found the shell in emacs on Windows to be very finicky and difficult to use. It has always been a minor pain point and I’ve had trouble finding reliable info. Ideally we could just use Powershell but I understand this is quite tricky. Powershell.el[1] didn’t actually work for me (beyond the editing mode) when I last tried it but I do see there’s a somewhat recent update. [1] https://github.com/jschaf/powershell.el https://github.com/jschaf/powershell.el
- 1996 6y ago
  WSL1 using a minimal rootfs from any debian distribution (so you can apt install things you need), accessed with wsltty as Windows Terminal has many issues (but supports tabs if you can live with it). This gives the best results overall: compatibility (amd64 instead of mingw), flexibility (apt install) speed (powershell 1) especially if you mount and access a CHD for your own files instead of using the regular tree inside NTFS. Also, if you really like powershell, use the linux version next to bash
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
posharma 6y ago
I've been a long time emacs user (15 yrs). After vscode was released, I abandoned emacs for most of my tasks. The effort to configure emacs is just too much when vscode does it seamlessly. Would you rather focus on the task at hand or maintaining your editor configuration! Setting up code navigation (jumping to a function and back, seeing all references) for C++ code was significantly complex to setup for emacs (compared to vscode). I choose productivity.
- ravi-delia 6y ago
  It's funny, I had the opposite experience. VSCode felt like kind of a scattered mess of features that never quite pulled into a cohesive whole. Productivity arguments always made sense for editors like Intellij, where the suggestions border on psychic for Kotlin, but if I'm just wiring a bunch of disparate plugins together I might as well do it with a nice easy config file. Plus Vim has better Vim emulation ;)
  - jmnicolas 6y ago
    > where the suggestions border on psychic for Kotlin If any Googler is reading, I wish it was the same for Flutter! I have 12 years of Visual Studio (not code) under my belt and I found the Dart / Flutter "intellisense" quite lacking in Android Studio.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- jjd33 6y ago
  Funnily enough the language server protocol makes it a charm for all editors (including nvim and emacs) to use the exact same code intelligence as vscode does. And I find the emacs and vim experience even better since I only have to add the lsp and the respective language plugin to a text file and that's it.
  - basicneo 6y ago
nobiot 6y ago
Author here. Thank you for the mention :)
- WalterGR 6y ago
  It’s good that your tutorial has people start with menus and doesn’t mention moving point using whatever non-arrow key chords do it (never bothered to learn. Fortunately I’ve been able to avoid teletypes and serial terminals in my computing journey.) The ‘traditional’ Emacs tutorial methodology is like teaching people to type with the first step being: change your keyboard layout to Dvorak. It’s ridiculous. I appreciate that you speak to your target audience in their language, rather than the language of the Emacs religion. (It makes me think of English vs. Latin.)
  - nobiot 6y ago
    Thank you!
ageofwant 6y ago
I use spacemacs, on Arch, all you need is https://develop.spacemacs.org/layers/+emacs/org/README.html#org-mode https://develop.spacemacs.org/layers/+emacs/org/README.html#... The org-mode spacemacs layer has support for a bunch of org-based tools Be sure to use the spacemacs develop branch.
searene 6y ago
I use VSCode most of the time, but when taking notes, org-mode is always my first choice. It's just too powerfull, nothing can replace it.
- djeiasbsbo 6y ago
  Isn't there an org plugin for VSCode? I also use VSCode but I use markdown with many tweaks for my notes but I also have Latex and Org support enabled for when I need it.
  - gegtik 6y ago
    There is an extremely rudimentary one, but the reason is that there is a ton of logic written in org that is non-trivial to port.
john4532452 6y ago
I was surprised to see the author of org-roam abandoned personal emacs config in favor of spacemacs. I did not expect this from a pro emacs user.

186 points by nanna 6y ago

It's funny that I've been using Emacs on windows 10 for years, and I would say that my work flow has only about 5% in common with the stuff in this repo.

intrasight 6y ago
You mean your org-roam workflow? Or Emacs in general. I'm asking because I was just reading about org-roam and plan to try it out.
nobiot 6y ago
Author here. Would love to know what’s the common 5% and the major differences.This guide was written with a complete beginner with no programming background in mind (myself 5-6 years before includes). I think veterans’ wisdom and experience can help rookies a lot.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Merman_Mike 6y ago

I spent a couple weeks reading docs and tweaking my Emacs setup. One day I launched it and my config was completely gone. I just gave up at that point.

vincent-manis 6y ago
I gave up on Windows long ago.
ryukafalz 6y ago
As in, your config file was deleted off your disk? That seems concerning in general, not just for Emacs.
- Merman_Mike 6y ago
  I'm using a Mac. I don't actually know what happened. Some cursory googling found 10,000 other, but similar, problems with Emacs so I just gave up hope. I was using Doom, so I assume there was some issue loading Doom.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    It's extremely unlikely that Emacs would be at fault. Doom, perhaps. And as everyone else has said, you definitely want to back up and version control your Emacs config. Most of the power in Emacs come from customizing it to your needs, and without it you'll lose much of your workflow.
bitwize 6y ago
Better to give up on Windows. As a HAL for your real OS -- Emacs -- Windows is pretty bad.
lovecg 6y ago
I store .emacs and other dotfiles in Dropbox, I’ve seen other people have been happy with Github as well. This way you get synchronization across all devices and backup; and your entire configuration process is pointing to the location of the file.
klibertp 6y ago
Hopefully you learned to version control your config files after that...

intrasight 6y ago

Since I didn't know what it was, I looked it up. Org-roam: A plain-text personal knowledge management system.

narag 6y ago
Is it related to org mode? Or does org mode support non-text information too?
- bobuk 6y ago
  org-roam is a solution for effortless non-hierarchical note-taking with org-mode. Basically, if you already using org-mode - it's a personal wiki-like system for your files.
- stinkytaco 6y ago
  Org-mode supports attachments and links to external documents. So I can create a file link or use org-attach to connect a file to an entry. Org-roam has some additional integrations like cataloging references specific URLs or bibtex references.
- ska 6y ago
  IIRC correctly, it's built on top of org-mode, with some tweaks toward use as a "knowledge graph"
felixr 6y ago
I think the two systems you need to know are: 1) https://orgmode.org https://orgmode.org 2) https://roamresearch.com/ https://roamresearch.com/ Combine those two and you get org-roam

kidman007 6y ago

As someone who is an avid emacs user and had to switch to windows with my last job change, this is super helpful. I’ve already got my own org-mode note-taking process, but I struggled quite a bit with other quality of life features on windows. This article is a great resource on getting spelling, docx exporting, and other quality of life configurations.

nobiot 6y ago
Author here. Thank you for your comments. Glad the guide was useful to you.

marrone12 6y ago

I'm on windows now and have been using emacs through WSL. Do people tend to prefer the native windows version or not?

GloriousKoji 6y ago
I prefer the windows version. It respects all the native graphic elements of windows like font hinting, high dpi and and transparency better and I can drag and drop from explorer into it. It's also nice that I don't need to start WSL and an xserver to get it going.
jaaron 6y ago
I definitely prefer WSL. I've found this article to be one of the better on setup of that environment: https://elecming.medium.com/the-ultimate-emacs-hacking-tutorial-in-windows-10-wsl-2-cfd3ea3893e3 https://elecming.medium.com/the-ultimate-emacs-hacking-tutor...
BeetleB 6y ago
I've run it on native Windows for the last 10 years. magit sucks, but everything else works fine.

ojnabieoot 6y ago

Do any friendly folks here have advice about shell choices in emacs on Windows 10? Using MSYS typically works well enough for me for simple commands, but I always have a separate Powershell window open for more detailed work and actually running my compiled binaries. Generally I have found the shell in emacs on Windows to be very finicky and difficult to use. It has always been a minor pain point and I’ve had trouble finding reliable info. Ideally we could just use Powershell but I understand this is quite tricky. Powershell.el[1] didn’t actually work for me (beyond the editing mode) when I last tried it but I do see there’s a somewhat recent update. [1] https://github.com/jschaf/powershell.el https://github.com/jschaf/powershell.el

1996 6y ago
WSL1 using a minimal rootfs from any debian distribution (so you can apt install things you need), accessed with wsltty as Windows Terminal has many issues (but supports tabs if you can live with it). This gives the best results overall: compatibility (amd64 instead of mingw), flexibility (apt install) speed (powershell 1) especially if you mount and access a CHD for your own files instead of using the regular tree inside NTFS. Also, if you really like powershell, use the linux version next to bash
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

posharma 6y ago

I've been a long time emacs user (15 yrs). After vscode was released, I abandoned emacs for most of my tasks. The effort to configure emacs is just too much when vscode does it seamlessly. Would you rather focus on the task at hand or maintaining your editor configuration! Setting up code navigation (jumping to a function and back, seeing all references) for C++ code was significantly complex to setup for emacs (compared to vscode). I choose productivity.

ravi-delia 6y ago
It's funny, I had the opposite experience. VSCode felt like kind of a scattered mess of features that never quite pulled into a cohesive whole. Productivity arguments always made sense for editors like Intellij, where the suggestions border on psychic for Kotlin, but if I'm just wiring a bunch of disparate plugins together I might as well do it with a nice easy config file. Plus Vim has better Vim emulation ;)
- jmnicolas 6y ago
  > where the suggestions border on psychic for Kotlin If any Googler is reading, I wish it was the same for Flutter! I have 12 years of Visual Studio (not code) under my belt and I found the Dart / Flutter "intellisense" quite lacking in Android Studio.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jjd33 6y ago
Funnily enough the language server protocol makes it a charm for all editors (including nvim and emacs) to use the exact same code intelligence as vscode does. And I find the emacs and vim experience even better since I only have to add the lsp and the respective language plugin to a text file and that's it.
- basicneo 6y ago

nobiot 6y ago

Author here. Thank you for the mention :)

WalterGR 6y ago
It’s good that your tutorial has people start with menus and doesn’t mention moving point using whatever non-arrow key chords do it (never bothered to learn. Fortunately I’ve been able to avoid teletypes and serial terminals in my computing journey.) The ‘traditional’ Emacs tutorial methodology is like teaching people to type with the first step being: change your keyboard layout to Dvorak. It’s ridiculous. I appreciate that you speak to your target audience in their language, rather than the language of the Emacs religion. (It makes me think of English vs. Latin.)
- nobiot 6y ago
  Thank you!

ageofwant 6y ago

I use spacemacs, on Arch, all you need is https://develop.spacemacs.org/layers/+emacs/org/README.html#org-mode https://develop.spacemacs.org/layers/+emacs/org/README.html#... The org-mode spacemacs layer has support for a bunch of org-based tools Be sure to use the spacemacs develop branch.

searene 6y ago

I use VSCode most of the time, but when taking notes, org-mode is always my first choice. It's just too powerfull, nothing can replace it.

djeiasbsbo 6y ago
Isn't there an org plugin for VSCode? I also use VSCode but I use markdown with many tweaks for my notes but I also have Latex and Org support enabled for when I need it.
- gegtik 6y ago
  There is an extremely rudimentary one, but the reason is that there is a ton of logic written in org that is non-trivial to port.

john4532452 6y ago

I was surprised to see the author of org-roam abandoned personal emacs config in favor of spacemacs. I did not expect this from a pro emacs user.