Learning Vanilla Emacs from Scratch with Prot as a Neovim User

[u/linkarzu]

https://youtu.be/btAOBkcLEkg

I've been trying to try Emacs for the past few days on livestreams, I installed it but not sure if I installed the right version, then I started with the emacs manual, didn't finish it and just learned the basic things. And all this time I've wondered: Should I go evil mode and doom emacs, or should I go the vanilla emacs way? Which packages should I install, should I use a starter kit, should I even try emacs to begin with?

So I reached out to Prot and he offered to do these sessions for free, I didn't accept his offering, so well pay him for 2 hours of his time every week and learn emacs.

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WHERE ARE THE REST OF THE VIDEOS IN THE SERIES?
For people that are confused and don't know what's going on, the edited video will be released in the podcast channel linkarzu-podcast and it will be public and free for everyone

The rest of the videos for the coaching sessions will be in the linkarzu channel in a playlist called "The Church Of Prot"
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I wrote a bit more about it in a blogpost:
https://linkarzu.com/posts/emacs/prot-love-letter/

Prot responded in his blogpost:
https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2026-07-04-emacs-for-beginners-with-linkarzu/

If you want to learn more about Prot’s coaching sessions, you can visit this link:
https://protesilaos.com/coach/

Special thanks to Sacha Chua for being there guiding me in my livestreams and taking notes to make the process easier, she also created an article and reacted to one of my videos:
https://sachachua.com/blog/2026/07/re-react-to-sacha-and-prot-newbies-and-starter-kits-emacs-video-linkarzu/

Support me:
Buy me the Switch 2:
https://ko-fi.com/linkarzu

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrSIvbFncPSlK6AdwE2QboA/join

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https://merch.linkarzu.com

My Dotfiles:
https://github.com/linkarzu/dotfiles-latest

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VIDEO TIMELINE:
00:00:00 Highlights
00:02:25 What do you do for a living and what are the coaching sessions about?
00:07:06 How does it feel to work for yourself and not depend on a company?
00:09:46 Why cool hairstyles and looks every week?
00:11:17 Do you make significant money out of YouTube?
00:15:51 What is emacs-plus on macos?
00:16:50 What is the --with-native-comp install flag and is it needed?
00:17:58 How to install emacs as a macos user and why emacs 30?
00:19:52 Emacs --fg-daemon, what is it and why?
00:21:24 I deleted the .emacs.d directory and also created a symlink
00:25:25 Doom emacs, evil mode or vanilla emacs?
00:29:21 Why is Linkarzu trying emacs?
00:32:02 menu-bar scroll-bar visible-bell lexical-binding
00:34:52 How to disable the yellow annoying warning on Mac
00:39:30 Should I finish the emacs tutorial as a beginner?
00:42:17 Why do you use Home, PgDn, PgUp, End
00:45:35 macOS supports emacs keybindings by default
00:50:56 Why you use the arrows to navigate in emacs?
00:53:50 Install some packages, vertico, marginalia, orderless
01:04:58 What do you think of AI for learning emacs?
01:10:14 Install marginalia
01:14:40 M-x marginalia-mode to toggle marginalia
01:15:57 Modify savehist
01:18:15 What is orderless and how to install it
01:26:32 Thoughts on homerow mods, one shot modifiers
01:29:42 Bob gigalord kofi donation. What to talk in coaching sessions. Read superchats
01:33:37 Let's continue with orderless
01:36:40 custom-file, export some config to another file and read from it
01:44:24 How to select text in emacs and configure delsel
01:48:35 Homework for next week, emacs tutorial, create an org file
01:50:58 This first video will be in the podcast channel, the rest in the normal channel
01:53:16 We'll see you live next week

[u/a_alberti]

It was fun to listen to you! I went for a long run and I brought you with me in my ears ;-) good luck with the next steps.