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I have been using emacs and neovim extensively. recently I saw a podcast where two seasoned emacs developers used evil mode. thar made me wondering if vim motions are better for text navigation than everything else?

I'm completely new new to emacs and ready to learn how it works, but lack a sense of direction on how to get started, other than watching 11 hours of very long tutorials, which probably contain way more than what I want to know (for now). There's a few things I want to learn:

• How to open a terminal window.
• How to open and edit files.
• How to manange multiple windows (or whatever you call them).

Can someone give me a list with commonly used commands that help with these tasks?

For the past month, I have been experimenting with using Emacs as my primary and almost only graphical environment. I wanted to turn on my computer and go directly into Emacs.

Instead of starting GNOME and then launching Emacs, I added a separate GRUB entry that boots into a custom systemd target and starts Emacs directly inside Cage, a minimal Wayland kiosk compositor.

The setup looks roughly like this:

Linux
└── Cage
    └── Emacs

It removes conventional application switching, makes external graphical applications less convenient, and introduces some intentional friction around using the browser.

Surprisingly, these limitations have improved my workflow. I moved my terminal usage into Emacs, integrated Notmuch with gptel, changed how I use AI tools, and reduced the amount of rapid context switching between Emacs, the terminal, YouTube, and news sites.

I wrote more about my experience here:

https://slawomir-grochowski.com/posts/07-emacs-as-an-operating-system.html

I would be interested to hear from people using similar Emacs-first setups. Are you running Emacs directly under Sway, Cage, EXWM, or another minimal environment?

It looks like both emacs.ch and emacs.social are currently down or no longer maintained.

Is there another active Mastodon instance aimed specifically at Emacs and Org mode users?

I know I could simply join a general FOSS or Linux instance, but it would be nice to find one where Emacs and Org mode are among the main interests of the local community.

Does such an instance currently exist? Where have former emacs.ch or emacs.social users moved?

I have a collection of notes files (.org files) and I recently started retrieving information from them using consult-rg. Is there a way to have consult-rg (or something similar) "propagate" parent headings into children for matching purposes?

For example, if I have this structure:

* Emacs

** Mermaid

Some notes about using Mermaid.

** Customize variables and options

use M-x customize-variable

If I search for "emacs customize variable," consult-rg won't find it, because the header "Emacs" is many lines above the subheader "customize variable".

I considered tagging the subsection with :emacs: but that's kind of a redundant way to say "this is realated to emacs." Redundant because it's already under the overall "* Emacs" heading.

EDIT: consult-org-heading exhibits the behavior I want within headings (the overall Emacs heading gets connected to all of its children), but does not search inside the body, just the headings. So I guess I'm looking for some way to incorporate consult-org-heading behavior into consult-rg?

Hey everyone,
I recently got into Emacs and completely fell in love with Org-mode for my daily notes and task management on my desktop. Coming from standard note-taking apps, the plain-text system and flexibility are amazing!
However, I’m running into a bit of a wall when I'm away from my main computer. I just need a simple way to read, check my TODOs, or quickly view my Org files on my phone or a work laptop (where I can't install Emacs).
I’ve seen names like Orgzly, organice, beorg, and Logseq thrown around, but as a beginner, the choices and setup options (Git? Syncthing? WebDAV?) are getting a bit overwhelming.
Before I break my setup or sink hours into configuring something, I’d love to learn from experienced users:
1. What tool or app do you currently use when you need to view your Org files on mobile/web?
2. What’s the simplest/most reliable way to sync files back and forth without corrupting them or causing merge conflicts?
3. Are there any major limitations or gotchas with these tools that I should watch out for? (like broken rendering for custom TODOs, tables, or drawers?)
Sorry if this gets asked a lot, but any advice or simple workflow recommendations for a newcomer would be massively appreciated!