 There has been a debate going on in the Emax community for a few months now that Emax really lags behind so many other text editors and popularity despite the fact that Emax is such a fantastic and unique piece of software, maybe one of the most powerful pieces of software ever designed. Why isn't Emax more popular? Why does VIM, for example, probably have 10 times the users that Emax does? I'm certain that VIM probably does have at least 10 times the users of Emax. Why is that? Why do text editors like VS Code and Sublime Text probably have 100 times the users of Emax? And this has been brought up within the Emax community and they're starting to debate it and they're wondering is it time to maybe make some changes with Emax, redesign a few things, maybe think about coming out with better defaults, something that's more attractive, more appealing to the new user, more appealing to the masses. So what got me thinking about this today was I came across this article over at LWN.net and this is by Jonathan Corbett. He mentions that the Emax community is starting to go over this discussion again. And the reason he says again is because again this has been going on for a few months because originally back in May there was a thread started within the Emax community about some of the defaults and maybe changing some things to again bring Emax I guess into the 21st century to make it more modern. When we talk about making it look more modern, let me switch to the desktop here and I'm going to launch a terminal. I'm going to launch Emax with just a plain vanilla configuration. This is what Emax looks like out of the box. You know, just a white background and some dark text. It's usually black text. The comments are red and, you know, these icons, these are not the default icons. I'm using the breeze icon set. The default icons are actually quite unattractive. The vanilla Emax, you do have a menu system that's very confusing because it tries to cover most everything you could possibly do in Emax, which there's a ton of stuff you can do in Emax and infinite possibilities. And it's just tough. And then to get any kind of help from information, if you read at the bottom, it looks like I could type this particular keychord to get some help information about how to use a new Emax. It's just it's not meant to be for the masses, right? This is something for power users. Emax is supposed to be a blank canvas. It's basically a elisp environment where you have to write a config file in elisp. You have to write your own text editor. So it's extremely powerful, but it's for the extreme power user. It's not really meant for everybody. Some people within the Emax community have put forth these questions like, well, maybe it's the UI that's the problem. For one thing, that blinding white background, most modern text editors now ship with a dark mode, usually on by default. But if it's not default, they at least have a very easy dark mode to get to very quickly. Some people have mentioned licensing issues as far as people contributing to Emax, maybe holding it back. Some people have mentioned things like more default plugins, plugins that are enabled by default. Some people have mentioned that, hey, the key bindings, the key cords for Emax are not what most people expect. And that's holding it back when somebody that's used to other text editors, especially other text editors in Microsoft Windows, for example, they first launch Emax and want to do a copy and paste. Control C does not copy. Control V does not paste. And some people have put forth that, hey, just changing those key bindings, the copy and paste key bindings could attract more users to Emax. I'm not sure if I agree with that. The other thing with the problem with that is why would Emax, which is 40 years old, this piece of software is actually 40 years, more than 40 years old, it dates back. And why would Emax change its key bindings to mimic what the newer text editors are doing? Why didn't the new text editors use the key bindings that Emax has been using all along? Why does Emax need to change their key bindings? So I don't I don't think it's a key binding problem. I think the idea that Emax not having a modern interface, quote, modern interface, that that's holding it back. I don't know because VIM doesn't have a modern interface. VIM is not a GUI application at all. So it obviously doesn't have a modern interface. You have to run VIM in the terminal. So definitely not a modern interface. VIM probably has 10 times the users as Emax. So the interface, you know, not being modern, that's not holding VIM back. So I don't think it's holding Emax back either. So I'm not one of those that think, you know, just redesigning Emax, making everything look pretty is all of a sudden going to make people use it. I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem here is that not every piece of software is meant to be popular. Why do people think that every piece of software out there has to be popular? It has to be new user friendly. It has to be easy to get into. Who made that decision? Because Emax, again, is the strange beast because of how it's set up. It's a completely blank canvas. There's nothing to it at all. By default, you have to program your own piece of software, your own text editor. It doesn't even have to be a text editor. You can do anything inside of Emax, whatever you write in ellipse, whatever you make Emax do for you, you can make it happen. But that's not new user friendly, right? Writing your own piece of software is not new user friendly and it never will be. But that's OK. That's not what Emax is about. You know, it's a piece of software that requires some technical knowledge, some mastery, and you can't dumb that down. You have to have all of this knowledge to make Emax do what you want to do for you. But you can't just give that knowledge to people. You just can't give it to them for free, right? They have to invest the time into it and nothing is given to you. You have to earn it really. And I know that sounds kind of snobbish, elitist. But that's the way some things are. I think that's the way things are with Emax. Other pieces of software like this to Vim is very much like this as well. It's not just an Emax problem. I mean, Vim is more popular than an Emax. But I think the reason Vim is more popular than Emax is because Vim is already on most Unix like operating systems anyway. Vim is already there. So more people kind of fall into Vim where Emax is usually not a default already installed, but Vim is not easy to get into. I don't think Linux. Let's talk about this. I don't think the Linux operating system good news slash Linux. I don't think that's easy to get into. And a lot of people have this same exact debate with Linux. We need to dumb it down. We need to make the install super simple. And then when the user interface comes up, you know, the desktop environment, it needs to be dumbed down. Don't give people a whole lot of options. Just a few big buttons on the screen, you know, think the GNOME interface. You know, that's that's what we need to give to people because if you've give them too much power to do what they want to do, you know, it will scare them away. It'll scare the noob away and he'll go back to Windows and maybe they're right. But is that such a bad thing? I mean, I want Linux to be more popular. I want free software to be more popular, but not every piece of free software is meant to be popular. And if Linux all it ever has is this two to three percent market share that we currently have, that's OK. That's that's not a bad thing. It doesn't mean Linux is bad, that it's a bad piece of software. It just means Linux has two to three percent of the desktop market share. That's all that means. I don't want to ever see pieces of software like Linux or VIM or in this case, Emacs ever fundamentally change what they're doing to appeal to users that probably are not going to use that software anyway, no matter the changes they make. And if you dumb it down to the point where some of these users would use that piece of software, all the users that used to use your software are simply going to leave you. So I don't think that the Emacs community, I don't understand why they're debating this. There's nothing wrong with Emacs has been going on for more than four decades. Emacs will probably be around another four decades. Why does it need to be popular? I understand you want your pieces of software that you love and that you use on a daily basis to always be there. But I don't think Emacs is in any danger of development ever ceasing. There's too many people involved in it. And just because it's not as popular as VS code, what does that matter? You know, it's not a there's too much tribalism when it comes to these pieces of software. I don't care how many people I don't care if I'm the only person left on the planet using Emacs, I'll still use Emacs. The same thing with Linux. I don't care if it has two percent market share, 20 percent market share, or if just a couple hundred people use it, you know, if I'm going to use it. It's what I like. It's what I'm going to use. Too many people get wrapped up in the numbers. Now, before I go, I want to thank a few special people. I want to thank Michael, Gabe, Corbinian, Mitchell, Devin, Fran, Arch 5530, Akami, Chuck, Claudio, Dylan, George, Kellogg, Devils, Lewis, Paul, Scott and Willie, these guys. They are the producers of the show. They are my high steered patrons over on Patreon. I want to thank each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen. All these names you're seeing on the screen. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because this channel is supported by you guys, the community. If you'd like to support my work, look for Distro Tube over on Patreon. All right, guys, peace.