Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

GNU Emacs VS Ghostty

Compare GNU Emacs VS Ghostty and see what are their differences

GNU Emacs logo GNU Emacs

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editorโ€”and more.

Ghostty logo Ghostty

A fast, feature-rich, and cross-platform terminal emulator
  • GNU Emacs Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-19
Not present

GNU Emacs features and specs

  • Highly Extensible
    GNU Emacs is highly customizable, allowing users to configure nearly every aspect using Emacs Lisp. This makes it remarkably adaptable for various workflows.
  • Rich Plugin Ecosystem
    There is a wide array of plugins available for Emacs, extending its functionality for programming, text editing, project management, and more.
  • Versatile
    Aside from text editing, Emacs can function as an email client, web browser, terminal emulator, and more, making it a powerful multi-purpose tool.
  • Free and Open Source
    GNU Emacs is free to use and modify, with source code available under the GNU General Public License, encouraging collaborative improvement and transparency.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    Emacs runs on many different operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and various Unix-like systems, ensuring a wide reach and consistent experience across platforms.

Possible disadvantages of GNU Emacs

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Due to its vast array of features and unique keybindings, new users often find Emacs difficult to learn initially.
  • Performance
    Emacs can be slower compared to more lightweight text editors, especially when heavily customized or handling large files.
  • Keyboard-Centric Interface
    Emacs relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts, which can be overwhelming and complex, leading to potential finger strain from extensive use.
  • Complex Configuration
    While its customizability is a strength, configuring Emacs to fit personal needs can be time-consuming and complex, requiring knowledge of Emacs Lisp.

Ghostty features and specs

  • Easy-to-Use Interface
    Ghostty offers a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate, making it accessible for users of all experience levels.
  • Enhanced Privacy
    The platform emphasizes user privacy, ensuring that personal data is kept secure and not shared without consent.
  • Multiple Platforms Supported
    Ghostty supports a wide range of platforms, allowing users to connect and share content across different networks seamlessly.
  • Customizable Features
    Users have the option to customize settings and features, enabling them to tailor their experience to their specific needs.

Possible disadvantages of Ghostty

  • Limited Free Version
    The free version of Ghostty offers limited features, which may restrict functionality for users not willing to upgrade to a paid plan.
  • Occasional Downtime
    Some users have reported occasional downtime or connectivity issues, which can disrupt the user experience.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While the basic interface is easy to use, some advanced features require a learning curve and may be more complex for new users.
  • Subscription Cost
    Users may find the subscription cost for premium features to be relatively high compared to similar services.

Analysis of GNU Emacs

Overall verdict

  • GNU Emacs is widely considered to be a powerful and versatile text editor, especially among programmers and developers.

Why this product is good

  • Highly Customizable: Emacs can be extensively customized with Emacs Lisp, enabling users to tailor the editor to fit their specific workflow.
  • Rich Ecosystem: There is a large variety of plug-ins and extensions available, which can transform it into much more than just a text editor.
  • Built-in Tools: Emacs includes numerous built-in tools such as a debugger, calendar, email client, and file manager, making it a comprehensive development environment.
  • Cross-Platform: Emacs runs on multiple platforms, which makes it accessible to a broad audience.

Recommended for

  • Programmers and developers who appreciate a customizable and extensible tool.
  • Users who want to integrate various development tools into a single environment.
  • Individuals comfortable with learning Emacs Lisp to create and understand custom scripts and configurations.
  • People interested in a text editor that has a strong and supportive community.

GNU Emacs videos

Switching to GNU Emacs

Ghostty videos

Ghostty is Probably The Best Terminal Emulator I've Ever Used

More videos:

  • Review - so i tried ghostty...
  • Review - Ghostty is a Fast and Feature-Rich Terminal

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GNU Emacs and Ghostty)
Text Editors
100 100%
0% 0
Terminal Tools
0 0%
100% 100
IDE
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare GNU Emacs and Ghostty

GNU Emacs Reviews

14 BEST LaTeX Editor for Mac & Windows in 2022
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It is one of the best LaTeX editor for Mac that allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Source: www.guru99.com
The Top 7 Notepad++ Alternatives for You
Emacs has been around in its various forms since 1976 and is another very worthy Notepad++ alternative. When I first started using Emacs I have to admit that I didnโ€™t find it the easiest to use. But once I got used to it I realized just how powerful Emacs is for the programming community.
10 Best Notepad++ Alternatives in 2020
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Source: www.guru99.com
7 open source alternatives to Dreamweaver
Vim or Emacs. Without participating in the holy war between these two traditional text editors, I can safely say that there are a number of enhancements for web editing available for both. So if you're already a terminal junkie, take your pick. Or, if those don't satisfy, try one of these Emacs/Vim alternatives.
Source: opensource.com
10 Best Sublime Text Alternatives in 2019
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Source: www.guru99.com

Ghostty Reviews

We have no reviews of Ghostty yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ghostty should be more popular than GNU Emacs. It has been mentiond 28 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

GNU Emacs mentions (6)

  • Emacs daemon as sytemd service in debian 12 (gnome)
    Cat .config/systemd/user/default.target.wants/emacs.service [Unit] Description=Emacs text editor Documentation=info:emacs man:emacs(1) https://gnu.org/software/emacs/ [Service] Type=notify ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/emacs --fg-daemon # Emacs will exit with status 15 after having received SIGTERM, which # is the default "KillSignal" value systemd uses to stop services. SuccessExitStatus=15 # The location of the... Source: about 3 years ago
  • Why does emacs exec path variable not just copy the users path variable?
    ## If your Emacs is installed in a non-standard location, you may need ## to copy this file to a standard directory, eg ~/.config/systemd/user/ . ## If you install this file by hand, change the "Exec" lines below ## to use absolute file names for the executables. [Unit] Description=Emacs text editor Documentation=info:emacs man:emacs(1)... Source: over 3 years ago
  • Hi DM's, what medium do you use to organise your campaign?
    For gathering notes, writing and organizing, Org-Roam which implies Org and Emacs. Source: almost 4 years ago
  • This Guy is getting out of control at this point.
    I was heading to gnu.org/software/emacs to prove my point and it said:. Source: over 4 years ago
  • opam doesn't see emacs?
    <><> Version-specific details <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> ๐Ÿซ Version 1 Repository default Homepage: "http://gnu.org/software/emacs" Bug-reports: "https://github.com/ocaml/opam-repository/issues" Authors: "anil@recoil.org" Maintainer: "anil@recoil.org" License: "GPL-1.0-or-later" Flags: conf Synopsis Virtual package to install the Emacs editor Description This... Source: almost 5 years ago
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Ghostty mentions (28)

  • I built a native macOS terminal so I'd stop losing track of my AI agents
    So I built a terminal. It's called viterm: a native macOS app in Swift + AppKit, with rendering handled by libghostty. MIT licensed. - Source: dev.to / 20 days ago
  • Workbench: A TUI for parallel coding agents
    I made a nice way to use all your coding harnesses and persist them entirely in the TUI. I love Cursor and Claude Code, but I like using many of them and often use them in combination with tmux locally and via SSH, so I made this for myself really. Hoping other people find it useful or cool. It's mostly for use inside of Ghostty (https://ghostty.org/) so image rendering and everything works nicely. Would love some... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • How My Coworker Who Didn't Know 'cd' Shipped to Production
    The downside of teaching a designer to use the terminal is that she will want hers to look like yours. Tanya saw my Ghostty theme and my catppuccin Starship theme over a screen share and decided she wanted both. Her Claude Code statusline came next. That's an entire other post. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • The Terminal Renaissance: Designing Beautiful TUIs in the Age of AI
    I built ghostty-automator, a purpose-built IPC layer for Ghostty that exposes the terminal's actual state to external processes. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • I gave my AI coding assistant a body โ€” and now it lives in my terminal
    It works on any terminal that supports the Kitty graphics protocol โ€” Ghostty and Kitty are the two main ones. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing GNU Emacs and Ghostty, you can also consider the following products

VS Code - Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

iTerm2 - A terminal emulator for macOS that does amazing things.

Sublime Text - Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features. Fully customizable with macros, and syntax highlighting for most major languages.

Warp Terminal - The terminal for the 21st century. Warp is a blazingly fast, rust-based terminal reimagined from the ground up to work like a modern app.

Vim - Highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing

Tabby.sh - Tabby is a free and open source SSH, local and Telnet terminal with everything you'll ever need.