For decades, Emacs has relied on the X11 windowing system on Linux. As the Linux desktop ecosystem transitions towards Wayland, Emacs—like many long-lived applications—faces the challenge of adapting to a new display protocol while preserving its flexibility and deep configurability.
This guide shows how I run a local language model inside Emacs with gptel and Ollama, and how to do the same with LM Studio, which is what I used when I first wrote this article. gptel is a small Emacs package that talks to local or remote models from any buffer.
When I want to test and learn a single package in Emacs it suits my best to create a simple empty emacs configuration directory in my src folder.
mkdir test-emacs-config
Then put in a very minimal .emacs file testing the package in question. The following sample tests the Vertico package.
If you've ever wished buffer-switching in Emacs felt a bit more like what you find in modern editors like VS Code or Sublime Text, the centaur-tabs package might just be the upgrade you're looking for. While Emacs excels at managing multiple open buffers, the experience can sometimes feel abstract—especially for users coming from tab-oriented editors.
The Emacs editor is often a point of contention in discussions among software developers—especially those raised on the traditional Unix philosophy of building software: “do one thing and do it well.” For many, Emacs is either a miraculous, all-in-one productivity environment or a monolithic anomaly that breaks all the rules Unix tried to teach us.
Peter Prevos has developed Emacs Writing Studio (EWS), a specialized Emacs profile designed for academic writing. EWS leverages org-mode for document assembly, citar for bibliography management, and denote for knowledge management. This setup is tailored for academics, a significant segment of Emacs users.
Navigating in Emacs
It is important to be able to navigate your files easily.
Thanks to the customizability of emacs you can change the default behavior in a few easy steps.
Change your file search to swiper like this:
Emacs can be extended with many different packages. The concept is called packages and with the following command you can se which packages are available and which are installed.
M-x package-list-packages
This will bring up a list like the following.
Why did I Choose to use Emacs? ... Because its more fun than Minecraft! :) - of course not. But the possibilities on how to use Emacs is fascinating. The thing that caught my interest for Emacs is the simple userinterface on the surface and the massive possibilities the lisp foundation gives you.