Obsidian User Curious About Emacs – What Should I Know?

[willschetelich]

Hey there!

I’ve loved using Obsidian for the past year. It’s my second brain — I use it for storing future ideas, managing current projects, writing, thinking things through, and organizing logical reasoning. It’s served me super well, and honestly, my laptop is basically just an Obsidian machine at this point.

But recently I stumbled across Emacs, and… you know how it goes — rabbit hole time . I'm not afraid of the rabbit hole, I just want to know about it! I love learning everything about a tool before deciding if it’s for me. When I learn all I can, I'm empowered to pursue what's best!

So I’m wondering:

What are Emacs really good at?

Where do they shine compared to Obsidian?

Where are they worse?

If you’ve used both (or made a switch), I’d love to hear your thoughts, workflows, or even your “aha!” moments.

Thanks in advance!

[idlip]

> What are Emacs really good at?

Emacs is the most open software you will see. I'd say it has good community, extension (packages) and legacy of staying maintained. You can craft emacs as you want, more than an editor. You can interface with various tools. Heck the main USP you would realize is the god-tier documentation on everything and discovering tiny features.

Since you mentioned only note-taking, I'd say in that area, emacs excels. But note that note-taking system is not everything, emacs will allow you to craft and build workflow as you require.

> Where do they shine compared to Obsidian?

emacs is: Editor + Note taking + Code editor + Integrate with tools ++ Extend more

> Where are they worse?

You might feel like packages or community is not that fast paced compared to other popular, trendy tools.

Emacs is a investment and journey, its not so I know emacs, its like I grow with emacs. You need lot of time to learn and understand to grasp it.

You can try two routes, 1. Replicate same workflow as obsidian in emacs, or 2. use emacs from scratch (minimal config) and understand the essence of it to build your own workflow.

[jtwoodhouse]

What should you know? You might have a lot of fun tinkering with your own personal text editor. It’s like building your own permacomputing environment.

I started using Emacs org mode to help me make sense of a manuscript after struggling with Obsidian for some time. Emacs + writeroom mode has the feeling of a console typewriter. I hit a keybinding and poof, distractions are gone.

I used Emacs Writing Studio as a starting point and vibe-coded some of the Lisp with Claude.

You don’t have to go full-on one or the other. I still use both. Use .md files if you want Obsidian compatibility.

[willschetelich]

Hey! Thanks for the response! The question becomes: 1. It it worth the investment for a young thinker/coder? Seems really cool! 2. comparing longevity of obsidian vs emacs

Thanks so much for reasoning with me!