1. Home
  2. Text Editors
  3. GNU Emacs Reviews
  4. User Review of GNU Emacs
GNU Emacs - Swiss army knife of organization and text tools.
December 12, 2019

GNU Emacs - Swiss army knife of organization and text tools.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with GNU Emacs

I use GNU Emacs as my primary text editor, as well as an organization tool for project tracking and to-dos as well as scheduling and planning. It is also used for taking notes and recording bits of information for easy retrieval later. I also use it for searching and parsing multiple large log files for troubleshooting.
  • GNU Emacs is a text editor that can do almost anything that you want to do with it. It is fairly easy to extend the functionality using Emacs Lisp with a large library available.
  • It can be easily customized using themes as well as custom code to change the look and feel as well as how everything works.
  • There is a bit of a learning curve for Emacs. In order to use it most efficiently, it takes a little time to learn the Emacs way, as well as learning the keyboard commands for everything. Many things can be done from the menu, but the keyboard is really most efficient.
  • Customizing and extending Emacs is done with Emacs Lisp. While very flexible, Lisp is a bit different programming language than many people are used to.
  • Emacs is free software, there is no cost at all.
  • It has helped tremendously in situations where many, or large, log files need to be searched.
While Notepad++ is a very capable editor, it is not nearly as customizable and extendable as GNU Emacs.
Microsoft OneNote is a nice, easy-to-use note-taking and organization tool. Its advantages are that it is GUI based, and it is easy to embed images, audio, and other media. If it doesn't do exactly what you want, or work how you want it to, you cannot change it. Emacs (and Org-mode for Emacs) can be easily modified and extended to do exactly what you want as well as work exactly how you want it to.
Since Emacs is free software, support comes from online forums, and online searches. I have always been able to find an answer to any question I've had, as well as "How do I do XXX in Emacs?". I've found Emacs users in general are very willing to help others who are learning Emacs and to share what they have already done with Emacs.

Do you think GNU Emacs delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with GNU Emacs's feature set?

Yes

Did GNU Emacs live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of GNU Emacs go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy GNU Emacs again?

Yes

If you are willing to put in a little time to learn how GNU Emacs works, it can be an extremely powerful and versatile editing tool, as well as being used for almost any kind of text searching, replacing, or processing. Using Org-mode alone is worth learning Emacs. Once you learn the basics, they can be applied and used in all areas that you would use Emacs for. If you want a text editor and information tool that you can use for almost everything, then the learning curve is worth it. If you want simple text editor for editing small files, then Emacs may be overkill.