I somehow missed the videos by Emacs Guy in which he records his experiment in running Emacs as his OS. Sort of. The idea is to install a minimal Linux system along with an X-server and try to do everything from within Emacs There are going to be some exceptions for things like browsers because, really, eww doesn’t match up to a full blown browser. The use of extra software is mitigated by using exwm so that everything runs in an Emacs window.
So far there are three videos. The first video, which runs about 18 and a half minutes, covers the installation and set up of Arch Linux and Emacs. Once that’s done, almost everything can be done from within Emacs by using eshell to run Linux core utilities when necessary.
In the second video, which runs 12 and a quarter minutes, Emacs Guy configures the Emacs package manager and arranges for it to use John Wiegley’s use-package macro. With that accomplished, Emacs Guy can get down to the job of configuring his Emacs to that the system meets his needs.
The third video, which is just over 16 minutes, begins the Emacs configuration with “making Emacs look nice.” That involves choosing a wall paper and making the Emacs windows a little transparent so that it shows; choosing a font (Source Code Pro); and choosing an Emacs theme (Nord). At this point, Emacs Guy has a nice looking desktop and basic functionality to build on. Presumably he’ll continue the buildout in subsequent videos. I’m looking forward to those but he’s been doing about 1 video a month so we’ll have to be patient.