I’ve written before about relative line numbers. The idea is to label the current line as 0 and the other lines as positive or negative offsets from it. It’s handy if you want to quickly move to another line. As I said before, there are ways—avy in my case—that you might find better for doing that kind of thing.
In another of his useful posts, Bozhidar Batsov gives his own take on relative line numbers. Batsov says that relative line numbers are particularly useful if you are an evil user but even users of conventional Emacs can find it useful. If this sort of thing interests you, take a look at Batsov’s post for some details.
As I said in my previous post on the matter, I’ve never been able to warm up to the idea. I seldom have line numbers enabled but when I do I find it just as easy to jump to an absolute line number. Actually, I don’t do that either, I just use avy to get where I want to go. It generally provides finer control over where the cursor lands and is just as easy to use.
Of course, as I always say, that’s the beauty of Emacs. You can adapt it to whatever your preferred workflow is. If relative line numbers seem like a good idea to you, take a look at Batsov’s post.