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GNU Emacs Reviews & Product Details

Verified User in Banking
UB
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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What do you like best about GNU Emacs?

Power. Flexibility.

I love to able to do everything in the same software. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?

Lack of interaction with other users.

No availbility to install in work. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?

Ease to write with. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

GNU Emacs Overview

What is GNU Emacs?

GNU Emacs is a customizable text editor that is an interpreter and dialect with extension to support text editing with content-sensitive editing modes, built-in documentation, Unicode support, and more.

GNU Emacs Details
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Product Description

GNU Emacs is a customizable text editor that is an interpreter and dialect with extension to support text editing with content-sensitive editing modes, built-in documentation, Unicode support, and more.


Seller Details
Seller
FreeCAD
Year Founded
1984
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N/A
LinkedIn® Page
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73 employees on LinkedIn®

Recent GNU Emacs Reviews

Verified User
U
Verified UserSmall-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
5.0 out of 5
"Power and flexibility"
Power. Flexibility. I love to able to do everything in the same software.
Peter B.
PB
Peter B.Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
5.0 out of 5
"Emacs - a great editor, a better IDE, the best virtual OS."
Emacs is extremely powerful and useful out of the box. Over the 16 years that I've been using it, I have repeatedly run into examples of real-world...
HG
Harshit G.Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
4.0 out of 5
"A genuinely good open source text editor for Unix"
Open source, built in. It works like charm for Linux-based operating systems. It is very simple to use. It is possible to do real-time edits, a cla...
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GNU Emacs Media

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82 out of 83 Total Reviews for GNU Emacs

4.5 out of 5
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82 out of 83 Total Reviews for GNU Emacs
4.5 out of 5
82 out of 83 Total Reviews for GNU Emacs
4.5 out of 5

GNU Emacs Pros and Cons

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Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
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Overall Review Sentiment for GNU EmacsQuestion

Time to Implement
<1 day
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Return on Investment
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48+ months
Ease of Setup
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HG
Freelancer
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
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Incentivized Review
What do you like best about GNU Emacs?

Open source, built in. It works like charm for Linux-based operating systems. It is very simple to use. It is possible to do real-time edits, a classic editor and it is very customizable as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?

While GNU emacs is legacy software, it isn't meant for everyone, especially the new GUI-loving generation. Needless to say, it has a comparatively steeper learning curve if you are accustomed to GUI editors. Also, compared to those fancy GUI editors, its functionalities are somewhat limited. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:

If you have not worked on it before, you may want to try other open-source GUI editors instead. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?

GNU Emacs helps me and my organization to seamlessly edit and maintain important configuration files in our Linux server. Not only that but GNU Emacs is also a primary text editor on our Linux server thus all text editing tasks are made possible through it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Computer Software
UC
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What do you like best about GNU Emacs?

Emacs and VIM are the text-only editors that are commonly used across Linux environments. Sometimes when you ssh into a machine there is no GUI editors available and you often reach for an editor like this. This is what I like best about emacs. It's usually installed on every machine and makes it easy to edit a variety of file formats on a remote machine. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?

Some people use Emacs as a daily driver, but I do not. There are too many nice GUI features that editors like sublime, vscode have that emacs does not have out of the box. If you are on a GUI desktop I prefer not to use emacs since it is text only. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:

If you are editing files a lot on remote machines you should try Emacs. It has a learning curve, but you will become very efficient the more you learn. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?

The problem I solve using GNU emacs is editing files on remote Linux machines. It makes it easy to log into deployed infrastructure and edit files since it is usually installed on most Linux distros. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Phil C.
PC
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What do you like best about GNU Emacs?

One feature, I don't know in other editor, is the ability to run subshell inside the editor, M-x rgrep M-x compile etc ... I also enjoy using fantastic modes like org-mode to manage notes... tramp is a cool utility to visit remote filesystems (ssh, ftp). magit worth to be used if you use git. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?

It's unclear over version to maintain configuration, usually I split my configs files and load them on purpose. debuging inside editor is not that easy, the mail client is counter intuitive, ie If I just want to open an IMAP url , I'll have to define a bunch of variables. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:

try to use xemacs or emacs with menu , until you learn the basic keystrokes, if vim user then use elvis mode which provide compatible vi key shortcuts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?

I made a script to trace allocations , and share the location of the new / delete using c++ macro , then I am able to switch to one line if file to an other ... I think I could other many other tools, but as far as I know org-mode is only supported by emacs and this is a reason to keep using it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ZM
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(Original )Information
What do you like best about GNU Emacs?

Fully-configurable. You can configure anything - Theme, sytnax highlighter, checker, menu options, keyboard shortcuts.

Cross-platform and consistent experience. I have a github repository with .emacs.d for emacs configuration accessible on any operation system.

Active and expert community. emacs community is supportive and experienced. emacs is older than me, so are many emacs developers. :) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?

A steep learning curve at the beginning. In fact, I gave up emacs twice before I fell in love with it the third time and decided to commit to it for the foreseeable future. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:

The built-in tutorial is interactive and easy to follow. Just do not get frustrated. You will be rewarded generously. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use it mainly as a Python IDE, but I also use it to write NSIS scripts, C++ from time to time.

I also use org-mode extensively as a TODO list and a notebook in general.

It boosts my coding experience and productivity. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ankit K.
AK
Senior Software Engineer
Enterprise(> 1000 emp.)
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What do you like best about GNU Emacs?

GNU Emacs is a powerful editor which provides the facility of an in-built sub-shell. It supports UNICODE fully. Everything can be done which can be done using any modern IDE. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?

It lacks good documentation. The repositories are scattered. It requires a lot of considerable time to learn working on GNU Emacs and that too, shortcuts are not easy to remember. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?

We are using Emacs to fix the small code changes and run the code in the background. In addition, we are using Emacs to make a to-do list and to make quick notes for future reference. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Jerry C.
JC
Head of Bioinformatics and Software
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Verified User in Information Technology and Services
UI
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
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What do you like best about GNU Emacs?

keyboard only interaction, extensive libraries, rich macros, same keyboard shortcuts i've used for over 30 years Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?

not exactly easy to learn or discover. integration with modern development systems limited or DIY Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?

mostly use it to reformat and clean up tabular data so it can be imported cleanly elsewhere. macros plus rectangular selections hard to reproduce elsewhere Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Brian L.
BL
Staff Machine Learning Engineer
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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Verified Current User
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What do you like best about GNU Emacs?

Emacs can do anything and the lisp extensions can tune it for any programming language or coding standards Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?

There is a learning curve of the better part of a day Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?

Of course I use it for software development but also so much more. I use emacs org mode to organize nearly everything I do and much of the information I've gathered. I use emacs key bindings for when I type in web text boxes (through the Chrome extension - edit with emacs). Basically I've used the same key bindings for everything since 1985 and there is almost no learning curve when using emacs for another application - just to learn some of the new macros like for debugging, formatting to code standards, etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Education Management
UE
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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What do you like best about GNU Emacs?

Everything can be done with the keyboard, without once using the mouse. An extensive amount of shortcuts are available Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?

Learning emacs is a steep learning curve. It requires lots of time to get into the workflow with emacs and memorizing the shortcuts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use emacs in the org-mode to take notes, write my todo lists and manage agenda files. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

YC
System Software Code
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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What do you like best about GNU Emacs?

Content recognition, full Unicode support, graphical interface, support for XDG conversions and native support for JSON parsing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Emacs?

Scattered repositories and configure system to integrate applications and difficult external code. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering GNU Emacs:

Write code, run available software and repository. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Emacs solving and how is that benefiting you?

Compatible with different PC operating systems, I make code and run in the background what I need to test to improve activity. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.