**Emacs** (pron.:[/](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English “Help:IPA for English”) [ˈ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key “Help:IPA for English”) [iː](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key “Help:IPA for English”) [m](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key “Help:IPA for English”) [æ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key “Help:IPA for English”) [k](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key “Help:IPA for English”) [s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key “Help:IPA for English”) [/](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English “Help:IPA for English”)) and its derivatives are a family of [text editors](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_editor “Text editor”) that are characterized by their [extensibility](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensibility “Extensibility”).  manual for one variant describes it as “the extensible, customizable, self-documenting, real-time display editor.” Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively as of 2013 Emacs has over 2,000 built-in commands and allows the user to combine these commands into [macros](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macro_(computer_science) “Macro (computer science)”) to automate work. The use of [Emacs Lisp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs_Lisp “Emacs Lisp”), a variant of the [Lisp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language) “Lisp (programming language)”) programming language, provides a deep extension capability.

The original EMACS was written in 1976 by Richard Stallman and Guy L. Steele, Jr. as a set of Editor MACroS for the TECO editor. It was inspired by the ideas of the TECO-macro editors TECMAC and TMACS.

Emacs became, along with vi, one of the two main contenders in the traditional editor wars of Unix culture. The word “emacs” is often pluralized as emacsen by analogy with boxen and VAXen.

The most popular, and most ported, version of Emacs is GNU Emacs, which was created by Stallman for the GNU Project. XEmacs is a common variant that branched from GNU Emacs in 1991. Both of the variants use Emacs Lisp and are for the most part compatible with each other.

Install Emacs on Ubuntu/Linux Mint

  1. Open Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T)
  2. Type the commands given below:

sudo apt-get install emacs

Install Emacs on Fedora/other RPM-based Linux

  1. Open Terminal (Application>system tools>Terminal)

sudo yum install emacs

Enjoy!!!

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Darryl Dias

I’m Darryl. I’m a 3D Artist, Programmer and Linux enthusiast. On this site I share my insights, tips and tricks, tutorials, methods and best practices.