Xah Talk Show 2026-06-12 Ep793. emacs, install Xah Fly Keys in WSL linux emacs
install Xah Fly Keys in wsl.
Video Summary (Generated by AI, Edited by Human.)
In this video, Xah Lee demonstrates the process of installing his custom Emacs configuration, specifically Xah Fly Keys, within a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) environment. The session is highly technical and covers his troubleshooting process for setting up a functional development environment in Linux.
Key Highlights:
- Goal and Motivation: The primary objective is to migrate his established Emacs workflow from Windows to WSL, ensuring he can use his custom keybindings and packages effectively (0:17-1:24).
- Technical Challenges: A significant portion of the video details the hurdles encountered, such as:
- Font Configuration: Debugging why font sizes and families (specifically Deja Vu Sans Mono) were not applying correctly in the Linux environment (51:38, 57:26, 1:04:19).
- File Management: Navigating the Linux filesystem and managing init files compared to his usual Windows setup (1:30:03-1:49:45).
- Performance: Comparing the startup speed of Emacs on Windows versus WSL (1:55:07-1:56:15).
- Philosophy and Commentary: Xah Lee provides commentary throughout on his distaste for certain Unix conventions, particularly the historic 80-character line-length limitation, which he argues causes unnecessary formatting issues for modern users (2:07:31-2:12:35).
Conclusion:
By the end of the video, Xah Lee successfully got Xah Fly Keys setup on WSL, as well as his entire custome emacs init. Also discovered is that the elisp native code compilation seems not available on this WSL, for some reason. (2:16:49-2:17:58).