GNU Emacs — The Complete Guide: Editor, Org Mode and LaTeX in One Free Tool
GNU Emacs, from the GNU Project, is a long-standing editor built around an Emacs Lisp interpreter, so almost every behaviour can be changed. It is free software under the GPL, free for any use, and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
GNU Emacs
Free Software Foundation (GNU Project)
An almost endlessly extensible editor, with Org mode for notes and tasks, AUCTeX for LaTeX, Magit for Git and more.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Language modes — code editing in Python, C, Fortran and many other languages.
- Org mode — notes, tasks and technical documents with code blocks that run inside them.
- AUCTeX — a package for writing LaTeX with compiling and preview.
- Magit — a very convenient interface for working with Git.
- TRAMP — edit files on a remote server over SSH from your local editor.
Who it suits
Engineers who want one tool for code, documentation and knowledge management over many years, and are willing to invest in setup. The shortcuts differ greatly from ordinary programs; start with the built-in tutorial (Ctrl+h, then t). If you mainly want a LaTeX editor that works out of the box, a dedicated editor will get you there faster.
Related tools
For a modal editor installed on almost every server — Vim. For a dedicated LaTeX editor — TeXstudio. For linked notes in a graphical interface — Obsidian.
Vim
Vim project (Bram Moolenaar, now maintained by Christian Brabandt and contributors)
The classic modal text editor installed on almost every Unix system — fast, light and suited to terminal and server work.
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Neovim
Neovim project
A modern Vim with built-in Lua, LSP and Tree-sitter — a fast keyboard-driven editor that also works in a terminal and on remote servers.
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TeXstudio
TeXstudio team
Desktop LaTeX editor with a built-in PDF viewer, auto-completion, table and formula wizards, and reference and spell checking.
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Obsidian
Obsidian
A local knowledge base of Markdown files with links and a graph view — for project notes, design decisions and lessons learned.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Emacs is more a working environment than an editor. The start is slow, but few tools stay with a user for so many years.