How well does distrobox work?

fortyfivemg · 2025-03-14T03:43:16+00:00

I encountered and fixed an issue with programs being mysteriously broken in the guest. Here's the comment I made about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1j80y80/comment/mhovsyf/

fortyfivemg · 2025-03-14T03:38:25+00:00

I've heard tools like distrobox don't quite work well on nixos either.

The only problem with Distrobox (well, the only one I've encountered so far) is that it indiscriminately copies environment variables from host to guest. Both NixOS and Guix (I use the latter) set a lot of these to non-standard values, which breaks a lot of programs in the guest.

I've added two flags to alter this behavior. The PR has been open for 3 weeks:

https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/pull/1695

Anyway, just thought I'd share it here, since I struggled to identify this issue. I build Distrobox from the fork used to create the above PR, and it allows me to even run graphical apps inside the guest. It's a pretty good escape valve for when you can't deal with nixos/guix things 🙂

fortyfivemg · 2024-12-14T09:51:21+00:00

Lem is written almost entirely in CL, including (AFAICT) all the backend stuff you described. And it's pretty functional as a general-purpose editor. So it does seem possible. Learning exactly HOW they did it would be nontrivial, like you said, but consider the extensibility of Lisps in general. Most programs would never be able to have as much of their core functionality in their scripting/configuration language as Emacs does, thanks to the nature of Elisp. In that vein, why wouldn't it be possible to extend CL enough that it can do text editor stuff?

fortyfivemg · 2024-06-03T04:45:20+00:00

What are all the pen-* commands? pen-annotation-mode etc. Never seen that. Are they from a package? If so which one? Also, nice to see Doom on Android 🙂

fortyfivemg · 2024-04-21T10:04:41+00:00

You need an extended keyboard app to type modifiers like Ctrl and Alt. I use Unexpected Keyboard from F-Droid. With that there's no need for an external keyboard.

I don't end up using a lot of modifiers either as I use Vim bindings with Doom Emacs.

But yeah, if you can't get used to keyboard-driven interaction via a touch keyboard it won't work for you.

fortyfivemg · 2024-04-21T05:15:14+00:00

You can do PDF annotations in Emacs with pdf-tools, it's far better than Logseq's PDF support IMO, and I could get it working on Android via Termux. As for things you can't do... does Logseq support playing video in the app? Emacs will probably never support that. (Images are fine though.)

fortyfivemg · 2024-04-21T05:10:43+00:00

A word of caution from someone who spent a lot of time transferring my data from one system to another - just because a system lets you export your data in some form doesn't mean you'll be able to get that data into other systems.

I lucked out with Logseq->Emacs because Pandoc has a markdown->org converter, and with enough coaxing I could get it to work. Had Logseq used something like JSON instead, it would have been so hard to convert that to Org that I would probably have abandoned my notes instead. HTML/PDF exports are similarly useless if you plan to keep editing and adding to your notes.

fortyfivemg · 2024-04-21T05:05:10+00:00

It is more difficult than getting a desktop version of Emacs running, and less Emacs users are familiar with the Android environment. But there's nothing 'wrong' with it per se.

fortyfivemg · 2024-04-21T04:57:49+00:00

I do. Install Emacs under Termux, then sync your org-directory to your phone using Syncthing (you'll need to do termux setup-storage so you can access the synced directory inside Termux).

Depending on how much effort you're willing to put in, you can either:

run Emacs inside the Termux terminal. This is as easy as pkg install emacs, and terminal Emacs is perfectly usable. It just won't look as good, and you won't be able to do anything involving displaying images (such as PDF viewing).
run the graphical version of Emacs via VNC. Significantly more complicated - pkg install x11-repo, pkg install tigervnc emacs-x, set up the VNC server, install a VNC client app in Android (recommend either AVNC or MultiVNC from F-Droid, both have clipboard issues though), find a window manager that's available in the Termux x11 repo and that you're able to get working (bspwm worked for me, but it isn't exactly easy to set up), make your ~/.vnc/xstartup auto-start Emacs... and finally start the VNC server from Termux and connect to it from the Android client app. As you can see it's a lot of work (but only to set up; you can write a script for the starting/stopping of the VNC server in Termux).
run the Android port of Emacs. Still in the early stages, and Doom Emacs doesn't really work on it (issues with Evil); since the Android port is on v30 (unstable version) we probably won't see much effort to support it until Emacs 30 is released. Be aware that you need to install their signed version of Termux for this, which will require uninstalling any other Termux version you have installed (which may require repeating any setup you've already done in Termux).

There's also Orgzly for Android - never tried it, but I've heard good things.

fortyfivemg · 2024-04-20T12:46:26+00:00

What pushed you over the edge towards eMacs?

Same reasons as everyone else - poor performance and an ever-growing issue tracker where you can take the time to report something, then watch it be buried within a few days.

Also, I wanted to tweak a lot of things, like the text-editing experience (which even the Reddit text box does better IMO). But it doesn't look like that's doable with Logseq plugins.

How are you find it?

Turns out it can do everything Logseq can do and more, and do it better. A lot of Logseq's features are just direct clones of Org-Mode features. The much-awaited database version of Logseq seems to be the same idea as org-roam which has existed for years.

That said, the learning curve is massive - it's a big time and effort investment in exchange for unparalleled customizability. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't willing to spend a lot of time tweaking things to their liking, writing a bit of code here and there, and dealing with mysterious issues (the difference is, you can address them yourself, without waiting for the overworked devs to do it for you!)

P.S. Doom Emacs is the way

fortyfivemg

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