Re: Is Emacs very alive, active and improving?

[Eric Brown <eric.c.brown@mac.com>]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> Eric Brown <eric.c.brown@mac.com> writes:
>
>> I run on Mac, Windows, Linuxes, and OpenBSD--pretty
>> much the same configuration files.
>> heterogeneous environments.
>
> That's interesting. Why do you use all those systems? I
> was "like that" when I always got computers from
> everyone I knew, when I "found" them, etc. Then I was
> under the incorrect impression that installing a Linux
> distro was difficult or at least tedious. Now I do it
> first thing, if you have a comic book or newspaper next
> to you it is fine. Just like you, I try to keep portable
> config files (not just for Emacs), which works "in
> theory" :) No, that works to 85-95%, really. I also do
> lots of stuff with ssh (but without X). First, I did
> everything local and then scp the files, now I run Emacs
> on the remote Solaris/SunOS with 99% identical
> experience.

I use a Mac 11-inch Air, because it fits in my man-purse and runs the
various proprietary software that I can't live without (Citrix,
Mathematica).  I spend most of my time in Emacs and the terminal, but
those proprietary apps (necessary for my earning a living) preclude me
from using:

My preferred OS is OpenBSD, which I run on an old laptop (my previous
Macbook) as my home server/firewall.

At work, I use CentOS as these are managed by the UNIX administrators
and that is what they prefer.  When I need a Linux, I use Debian
GNU/Linux.

Occasionally, I am involved in a special project that uses Windows 2008
as the server platform.

I use Emacs Starter Kit (eschulte's version) as my base: then, I make
use its convention of loading machine name and username .el files in
order to customize for work vs. home and all machines.  It's all tied
together with git/gitolite.  Generally, it is straightforward to supply
different paths, etc. for different operating systems and machine
peculiarities.

I think that Emacs is a great way to unify my environment over radically
different underlying architecures.