Table of Contents
- 1. learning doom emacs
- 1.1. Background
- 1.2. Linux
- 1.3. Emacs
- 1.4. Doom Emacs
- 1.5. Why still windows 11
- 1.6. Would I recommend this to the reader
1. learning doom emacs
with great power comes great responsibility
1.1. Background
I switched to linux during the Lodha Genius Programme on my system this year. This change is attributed to one of my teaching assistant for the Quantitative Biology course, who inspired me to give this piece of technology a try. I am using Windows since 2013. I used Windows 7 for most of my life(till now) -> Windows 10 -> Windows 11. I have never researched about the philosophy of linux, its distros, community, features, nothing. But seeing someone using linux for one straight month in front of my eyes was enough to convince me to give it a try. So I dual booted fedora on my system along with Windows 11 and thus began my linux journey.
1.2. Linux
I will not make a mistake to say that I have reached a decent level at using the linux os, yet, but I have become comfortable with looking up for sudo command in gemini to fix something that is not allowing my laptop charge or to scroll through reddit to find a command which installs a particular package. The distribution which I use (fedora) has real nice GUI which is actually good for beginners like me. I haven’t found any major difficulty in using linux apart from having to attend teams meeting from a browser(nightmare). I discontinued fedora as the default boot for a month, where I needed a system which just worked (Windows) and doesn’t want the user to fix some bug in middle of a study session. I switched back to linux as the main os 2 weeks back and the transition has been pretty smooth so far, until I got doomed.
1.3. Emacs
Recently I started following a youtuber and streamer with the alias name jvsholz who livestreams learning japanese (nowadays). He introduced me to a software called Emacs, which he uses as his note taking application. He went through his file structure and the way that he documented he Personal Knowledge Base, which made me curious, whether it is better than my OneNote and Notion. After looking up youtube and some reddit posts, I figured out that there are community based on the type of text editor that you use, namely Emacs and Vim! Interestingly I already had some idea about these two due to a Lex Fridman podcast which I watched but never bothered to actually search. Believing this as a sign for a new shiny object. I went into a rabbit hole of Emacs.
1.4. Doom Emacs
Doom Emacs. Yes you heard it right, this is an actual distribution of Emacs about which I was really fascinated to use ( part of which comes from its name ). I installed it. Error. Tried again. Errors. Watched a complete youtube tutorial, still some issues. I was getting a taste why is this thing called Doom Emacs (I was just messing each time ,nothing wrong with the distro). It finally worked, but I had no clue on how to make it useful. Went into another rabbit hole of figuring this out. It is day 2 of me trying to learn Emacs, and I am feeling a little bit confident with this piece of software. I started taking some notes on Relation and Functions in the org-roam mode which allows us to organize your documents in nice way. I made some todos, sheduled some pseudo tasks and it finally feels rewarding. After all this chaos, I finally had a system in place which allows me to disintegrate my system however I want. Interestingly, this post is also being documented in dooms org-mode : )
1.5. Why still windows 11
Why I still have windows 11 as a dual boot? I have some exam which requires a windows application to practice and attempt mock test. Will I completely switch to linux once the exam is done? Maybe. Will I keep using Emacs? Definitely.
1.6. Would I recommend this to the reader
So after reading this blog, will I recommend linux or emacs to you? yes! should you blindly just download arch and try out a whole week how to get your bloated windows 11 back? absolutely not. It really depends on your personal goals and willingness to learn such an advance piece of software and os. What level I am on this hierarchy of learning? 0, zero, zilch, kein. But will I keep trying? a 100%. So if you are someone who is into organization, then sure, give Emacs a try, who knows that you may become its fan too! danke, sayonara.
Author: atharva
Created: 2025-10-02 Thu 23:59