what OS do YOU use, as an emacs user?

Just curious for a quick n dirty read, so sorry if I missed your favorite distro or bundled yours with one you dislike; I'm no linux guru, I'm in the middle of a distro hopping soul searching journey right now. Lemme know how good your OS is at integrating with emacs, bonus points if you suggest a window manager too. EDIT: I'm sorry that people are upset with me for the way I've set up the poll, I am close to a total newcomer to Linux, and I've just seen these groupings of distros around (usually referring to difficulty/level of customization) so I figured it was a fine enough compromise since I couldn't add them all as poll options. As for why I didn't include various distros like BSDs, as some commenters guessed, I just had never heard of them before. Also sorry that it's single choice, it slipped my mind and I can't change it now [View Poll](https://www.reddit.com/poll/stpcmq)

i'm on Gentoo as my daily driver, with i3 as my WM, but i also run OpenBSD on a couple of servers; i imagine a number of people here use one or more of the various BSD OSes and/or their derivatives (e.g. MidnightBSD, GhostBSD).

I use an Arch based distro, so I chose Arch/Gentoo/similar, but why are Fedora, Manjaro, and Debian grouped together?

Having Emacs on any platform (also BSD?) is reassuring and makes my knowledge and configuration future proof.

I use Arch Linux (EndeavourOS) with i3 and it works perfectly with Emacs as a server. I use several i3 shortcuts to activate Emacs as a terminal or R IDE, email etc.

["I don't care about the OS I use, it is just a boot loader for Emacs anyway." -- PhD Student at University of Pennsylvannia.](https://emacsnyc.org/assets/documents/emacs-the-editor-of-a-lifetime.pdf)

The poll is lame because it doesn't allow multiple choices. For instance, I use emacs under Windows, MacOs, Debian, Ubuntu and sometimes even OpenBSD. I have the same configuration so it does not make all that difference.

You already apologized for being no Linux Guru. Nevertheless I'm [mentally forced to give feedback](https://xkcd.com/386/). ;) What is the difference between `Ubuntu / Mint / Similar` and `Fedora / Manjaro / Debian / Similar`? (Hint: [Debian is the base of Ubuntu and all derivatives like Mint](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Linux_Distribution_Timeline_21_10_2021.svg)) What should users select, which use WSL2? (its is not as bad as Windows, but also not as good as a real Linux) If you are searching for a new home, then be sure to have a look as NixOs or [Guix](https://guix.gnu.org/en/download/). Those are some pretty interesting options.

Full time "professional" Linux distro developer here. People are far far too obsessed with distros, mostly for the wrong reason. Your choices pretty much break down into the packaging system used, the release methodology, and how big and/or new the package list is. Here are your considerations: Package management. They're all equally good now, just discount it. Do you want long term support and "stable" incremental releases, or a rolling release that's closer to the latest release of a package? Are there any particular applications/versions you want? If so, find the distro that offers them. You might want to consider how new the kernel is too, but unless you're running some weird or very new hardware, I doubt you really do. Honestly, beyond that it's mostly just fanaticism. It's all the Linux kernel with GNU userspace and then packages on top. When most people tell you "Mint is the best" it's because they're thinking about the desktop manager for instance. As for Emacs, I find it works well on all the major OS. I'd say the order of integration is Linux, BSD, MacOS, Windows. However, it works very well on all of them, even Windows. In fact, you could argue it gives you a Linux style shell on Windows, so it's a bonus.

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Fedora, Manjaro and Debian are far from similar. They should not be in the same group. Plus, why is multiple selection not available? I started using emacs on macOS, Windows and GNU/Linux.

Clearly, my OS is emacs.

Endeavour here, but running Qtile.

Even with an artificially split GNU/Linux population, Windows comes last. I suspect that this is far from representative of the community at large. To answer the question, I don't know any OS or WM (EXWM aside) that's good at integrating with Emacs. I'd also say that it's not their job. Emacs, on the other hand, can integrate with all major OSes, and follows established protocols that most WMs can use.

NixOS for me, configured via org-mode/org-babel, so a substantial integration. From Emacs tangle-ed config (NixOS custom iso, VERY easy to made on NixOS, as opposite as Kickstart/Preseed of RH/Debian family) to the newly deployed NixOS with EXWM :-) Not using Guix System simply because the last time I tried too many things I use are missed/complex (LUKS+LVM+zfs, just for the basic deploy), I always think to try again since Nix language is a bit obscene but...

Perhaps in the sense "Easy/for dummies distros" (Ubuntu / Mint), "Classic distros" (Fedora / Debian, Manjaro perhaps added as a new classic, while IMO it's not) and "Experienced users focused distros". The absence of *BSD and IllumOS probably reflect the OP/GP knowledge, perhaps he/she might be a relative GNU/Linux newcomer for instance that so far do not know or think other unices exists...

Most people came from Windows, an OS that almost demand a new fresh install just to change language, with essentially one and only one desktop environment bolted in the kernel, with such background distros sound like different OSes

No love for BSD's, sad. Also, first time I've seen Debian not being grouped with Ubuntu/Mint. Aaand Arch/Gentoo?

Dude you messed up the categories, don’t make much sense. Also It’s my impression that lots of FreeBSD users are fond of emacs, but that isn’t even an option.. No BSDs are on there..

NixOS

TIL that the plural of unix is unices

Where should I vote with opensuse TW?

But what about the BSDs?

OpenBSD, FreeBSD here with a touch of Debian

GUIX which is written in Guile Scheme, so it is very Emacs friendly. I have been using OpenBox WM for... a very long time which has low overhead and since configuration is all text files, is also very Emacs friendly.

At home I use Emacs on Windows with WSLg. It works much better than I expected. At work I use Emacs on macOS with [emacsformacosx.com](https://emacsformacosx.com).

This poll seems to be a thinly-disguised “what distro should I use?”question.

Absolutely, and distros try to sell themselves as such, which is even more annoying given it's meant to be free as in freedom

The amount of poll choices on Reddit are limited, so I think there just wasn’t room.

Surprised to see so many mac boys using emacs.

Honestly, the worst part about using emacs on Windows is that when you go looking for advice on how to do something, there's often very little help available that doesn't assume some sort of Linux-ism. There's a lot more hoops to jump through to get where you're going. That said, almost everything is possible at some point. The only thing I haven't been able to figure out how to do is set up an LSP for the projects I've been working on.

Thats more MacOS than I expected ngl

I am shocked to find windows user here!

Single choice only is pretty impractical and may warp results

I don't see FreeBSD or UNIX based distros

Excellent points, fully agree > You might want to consider how new the kernel is too, but unless you're running [...] very new hardware, I doubt you really do. Though this often means nothing more than having a fairly new laptop. Even though Ubuntu LTSes move their kernel on, so you have a good chance of getting support even for hardware newer than 2020. Currently Ubuntu 20.04 [is broken](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-hwe-5.13/+bug/1958591) for (AFAIK) Ryzen 4750U, if not all Ryzen 4??0U, which is not even the latest generation. Later kernels fix it, along with other bugs on my Thinkpad.

I use emacs on both linux and mac (and use vim on windows, because I rarely edit text there) but mac seems to work better with emacs more than the linux ecosystem does :( 1. Almost all Mac apps support basic emacs keybindings like C-a, C-e, C-d, C-k, C-f, C-b, C-n, C-p, etc. [And you can opt in to more](https://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/KeyBindings/Emacs%20Opt%20Bindings.dict). Mac has a standard setting for caps->ctrl whereas on Gnome I have to download gnome-tweaks to make this change. 2. Mac reserves Ctrl for terminal and emacs. System keys like Copy/Paste are on Cmd, not Ctrl. For example on Windows and every Linux system I've tried lately, Ctrl-C means something different in terminal, emacs, and other gui apps. On Mac though Cmd-C is copy on all of these. Cmd-S is save, and never conflicts with Ctrl-S for isearch. My "muscle memory" is happier. If you *only* use Emacs then this probably doesn't matter, but I do use other apps like browsers and image editors etc. and it's really nice that I can use the same keys everywhere.

[wiktionary says it's actually unixes](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Unixes)

Arch works excellently,with xmonad

MacOS, Ubuntu, and FreeBSD, concurrently. One of the nice things about emacs is how easy it is to have the same environment everywhere.

I was puzzled when I saw this, because that's exactly my work machine. Then I saw it was a display bug; I basically run my laptop as a server and use a VNC session from a Mac with a bigger screen. (Remote-job awkwardness.)

The main issue IMVHO is that we (society) lack both a clear definition of "operating system" and how it can/should be, and we live on '80s-style combo of pkg managers/installer/filesystems. Xerox/LispM clearly demoed that their pre- and post- unix idea of an operating systems as a single software, easily bendable by end users with very limited programming skill, with "user-construable UI" (like Plan9 "type a function for a menu entry, then click on it" to org-mode elisp: etc links passing through classic SmallTalk UIs) is The Way to go if we really want "give users the IT power" while the actual way is a continuous frustrating testing of ways to deprive users of any power, from classic IBM forms to modern WebUI/services keeping the system still usable to a certain extent. That of course impact system innovation: being tied these days to classic fs is ridiculous IMVHO. So far only SUN (and NOT Oracle thereafter) try to goes *a little bit* forward with zfs for storage and IPS (IllumOS, formerly OpenSolaris) for packages. Even BeOS was more advanced than modern systems in that regard. We keep "rediscovering" past feature, considering them new exiting state-of-art tech, and miserably fail to bring them at a system level... Honestly I think that the only solution there is public research, by public universities. Not much different than the "big labs" model of the past, only being *completely* public it avoid the disastrous evolution we see in the past. Until that there is no much evolutionary hope, Emacs and the little *community-based*, *community-designed and develop* FLOSS project can just keep knowledge alive, until usable iron can be bought... These days even developers being born and trained on today paradigms fail to understand how to evolve differently, the whole literature tech "lateral thinking" but we just have a single design, single monolithic thinking ...

Thanks and sorry, my English (Italian living in French) is still just a step above an illiterate... A day or another I'll choose to study grammar and vocabulary seriously, so far unfortunately that's still not happens...

> Package management. They're all equally good now, just discount it. Disagree. The reproducibility of packages in Debian is far better than arch. Then things like Nix explore the declarative and reproducible paradigm further and have some big benefits like rollbacks for your configuration and better portability across machines. Hopefully the ergonomics get better, but I find nix expressions much easier than rpm or debs. > Are there any particular applications/versions you want? If so, find the distro that offers them. And hope you don't need multiple versions of the same library :)

I do something very similar.

It's interesting to see so many macOS users because I feel like the macOS development of emacs is always a step behind or OS-specific features are not prioritized for mac. This is just my limited perspective though, I don't typically peruse the emacs devel mailing lists.

Redcore Linux. (gentoo based, but easy to install)

Arch and Manjaro are also in different categories. The distinctions in this poll are pretty close to meaningless.

> Disagree. The reproducibility of packages in Debian is far better than arch. Agreed. deb files are easily the most popular. On the other hand, pacman is fast and Arch has AUR. Gentoo has to compile everything. Package management definitely still matters.

I'm having a hard time believing it, but apparently nixpkgs is larger than AUR per https://repology.org/? By total number of packaged projects nix (nixpkgs unstable) - 69300 AUR - 62270 Debian+derivs (Raspbian Testing) - 36100 FreeBSD Ports - 28714 Fedora (Fedora 34) - 22500 It would be interesting to see some sort if popularity measure here too.

Some people use more than one OS :-).

I use emacs under Windows since my work requires Windows. Learned emacs way back under BSD, just got used to the key bindings. Using a different editor often becomes difficult or something I choose not to do if I can't change the keys to at least emulate like the most common emacs controls. E.g., just started to look at notepad++ as an alternative to notepad, not sure I can change the bindings easily. Took some doing with VS some years back too, probably easier now (I assume). The keys are just ingrained in my muscle memory.

Seems pretty outdated. nixos.org says "over 80,000". aur.archlinux.org says 73k, and arch official packages are at 12k.

Freebsd/Solaris/macos

Check my setup which "supports Windows. Find&Grep files on Windows with minimum setup" https://github.com/redguardtoo/emacs.d

Oh, I've got a setup that I like now, thanks. I use sift and locate and everything search. But one of the things I'm talking about, for instance, is when you look at how various project management packages assume the layout of files. There's a sort of canonical unix/linux way, but if you work on big visual studio projects like I do, the packages are harder to set up. They make assumptions about search paths and file hierarchies that just aren't present. Again, everything works after a fashion. Getting tools working on Windows is easier than ever, it's just not a seamless experience if you're a bit lost. But your setup looks really great. I'll probably peruse it to see if there's anything I can steal. :)

Also Xubuntu And Ubuntu and Cygwin

I use artix on my desktop. And I use a MacBook as my laptop. Both share the same emacs config. The biggest difference for me would be the hardware, specifically the keyboard. The underlying os doesn’t make that much of a difference.

OpenBSD

[Yes but Wiktionary says Unices](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Unices) btw i have never heard of wiktionary before I searched up unices

I use emacs on Linux for personal and MacOS for work. I’ve used both ArchLinux and NixOS, currently using NixOS. Also I build emacs using nix on my mac, so you know. NixOS is worth a shot, it’s one of the more interesting distros

Don't forget that nixpkgs has a lot of pip packages too. Despite that number,

The problem is not with the options that you list but with the assumption that one would only use one of them. The one thing that is consistent in all my computing environments is emacs. I use Windows at work, I have a MacBook Pro, a Raspberry Pi, a Dell X86 running Fedora, a SAN that runs some Linux distro or another. All of them have emacs installed. I used to joke that I knew enough vi to install emacs. Now the real competition is VSCode. I use other editors but my fingers are programmed to type emacs commands. I don't think about it. Just my two cents worth. I think your question about platform is an indication of you lack of understanding of how emacs users use emacs. As far as what to run emacs on, it really doesn't matter. It runs equally well everywhere. Pick your platform based on other factors is my advice.

I don't care, all of them run Emacs. No, seriously: used Fedora and Gentoo for a few years, then switched to macOS for a while, and I'm currently using Windows 10 mostly. Windows is kinda tricky though: I use Cygwin and launch an Emacs daemon through mintty. I don't use the Emacs bundled with Cygwin though, I just downloaded a binary, probably from Emacs.org. Also, AltGr is implemented as Ctrl+Alt, which is very f**d up when you need it for typing, I had to set up about half a dozen commands, like AltGr+the key to the right of 0 to type a backslash. Did that once a few years ago and kept it on my .emacs file. Never needed to set up new ones. MacOS was also tricky: I had to swap Command and Alt. Emacs has an option for that. I don't dislike the regular macOS placement, but I didn't want to fight my muscle memory. Emacs is very unixy, which means it interfaces the outside world via pipes and text, so it's very easy to integrate with everything else. It works the same for me everywhere, and that reduced a lot my OS-picking anxiety.

Guix + Emacs + EXWM + Nyxt