Where to Learn
Table of Contents
Emanix is Emacs, NixOS and a Wayland compositor stacked on each other. That is three things to learn, and the answer to "where do I read about this" should never be "search and hope". This is the list.
Everything here is also inside the machine: M-x emanix-guides, or press g
in the welcome buffer, and each entry opens with RET.
1. Emacs
The manuals ship with the editor. They are not a web page you visit — they are in the running Emacs, searchable, and always the version you actually have.
| Manual | Open with | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Emacs manual | (info "(emacs)") |
The editor itself, exhaustively |
| Emacs Lisp Intro | (info "(eintr)") |
Start here to write your first Elisp |
| Elisp Reference | (info "(elisp)") |
The language, for when the intro runs out |
| Org manual | (info "(org)") |
Outlines, agenda, literate configuration |
| Emacs FAQ | (info "(efaq)") |
Short answers to the common confusions |
C-h i opens the info directory — every manual installed, from anywhere.
Three more worth knowing, because they answer questions the manuals do not:
C-h k then a key says what that key does; C-h f describes a function;
C-h v a variable. In an Emacs where the desktop is also the editor, C-h k
is the fastest way to find out what just happened.
2. The compositor
EWM is what makes Emacs the desktop rather than an application inside one. It is a separate project, upstream of this distribution:
Its keys are documented on Keybindings here, but behaviour questions — why a surface behaves the way it does, what the compositor supports — belong upstream.
3. Nix and NixOS
| Resource | What it answers |
|---|---|
| NixOS manual | Configuring the system: services, users, boot |
| Nixpkgs manual | Packages, overlays, how derivations are written |
| nix.dev | Learning Nix the language, from the beginning |
| Home Manager options | Every option the per-user layer accepts |
If you are new to all of it, nix.dev first. The manuals are references and
reward knowing the language already.
4. This distribution
- Philosophy — why it is shaped this way
- Architecture — how a host is composed
- Options — every
emanix.*option - Keybindings — the full key surface
- Theming — palettes and how they reach each program
- Installation — including installing a host from scratch
5. A note on which manual is right
The three layers answer different questions and it is easy to ask the wrong one. A rough rule:
- How do I make the editor do X? — Emacs manual, or
C-h kon the key. - How do I write code that does X? — Elisp intro, then the reference.
- How do I make this machine have X? — NixOS manual, then Nixpkgs.
- Why does my window behave like that? — EWM upstream.
- What does Emanix itself decide? — these pages.