internetguy.dev/posts/emacs-1

Learning Emacs: Part 1

May 25, 2026

Learning Emacs: P1 (The Basics)

I am tired of Obsidian. Really. I’ve been using Obsidian for around 4 years and have gone through 8 different iterations of my note-taking/PKM setup. Obsidian is becoming too cluttered, bloated, and slow. I have too many plugins and random shit that takes several seconds to all load in when starting Obsidian.

I have been eyeing Emacs’ Org Mode for a long time as an alternative PKM setup. Having been a (n)Vim using my entire life, Emacs seems rather unintuitive and intimidating. While I have tried to learn Emacs on other occasions, I have always given up just after a few days at most. I just felt slow and hampered by the weird settings and defaults that Emacs has.

Today will be different. Now driven by a actual motivation to replace my PKM and use org-mode, I need to actually, properly, learn Emacs and Emacs configuration. I plan on learning this over the course of the next few months over the summer, just in time to put my fancy new org-mode setup to use in college.

For now, I’ll start with a very basic configuration in ~/.config/emacs/init.el:

(setq inhibit-startup-message t)
(scroll-bar-mode -1)
(tool-bar-mode -1)
(tooltip-mode -1)
(set-fringe-mode 10)
(menu-bar-mode -1)
(setq visible-bell t)
(custom-set-variables
 ;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom.
 ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
 ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
 ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
 '(package-selected-packages '(markdown-mode)))
(custom-set-faces
 ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
 ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
 ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
 ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
 )

And for some keybind references:

  • M-x dired = dired file manager
  • C-x 1 = keep current buffer
  • C-x 2 = hsplitd
  • C-x 3 = vsplit
  • C-x o = switch to next buffer
  • C-x C-s = write file
  • C-x C-z = close emacs
  • C-x C-f = create/find/open file
  • M-w = copy
  • C-y = paste
  • C-/ or C-x u = undo
  • M-x package-install = install package from ELPA
  • in dired…
  • + = new folder
  • g = refresh
  • C-x b = go back to previous buffer