How To Install emacs on CentOS 8

emacs is GNU Emacs text editor

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install emacs on CentOS 8.

What is emacs

Emacs is a powerful, customizable, self-documenting, modeless text editor. Emacs contains special code editing features, a scripting language (elisp), and the capability to read mail, news, and more without leaving the editor. This package provides an emacs binary with support for X windows.

We can use yum or dnf to install emacs on CentOS 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install emacs.

Install emacs on CentOS 8 Using dnf

Update yum database with dnf using the following command.

sudo dnf makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install emacs using dnf by running the following command:

sudo dnf -y install emacs

Install emacs on CentOS 8 Using yum

Update yum database with yum using the following command.

sudo yum makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install emacs using yum by running the following command:

sudo yum -y install emacs

How To Uninstall emacs on CentOS 8

To uninstall only the emacs package we can use the following command:

sudo dnf remove emacs

emacs Package Contents on CentOS 8

/usr/bin/emacs
/usr/bin/emacs-26.1
/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/f8
/usr/lib/.build-id/f8/d9cbf5e4f43a84065546ced2fd32a51580ce28
/usr/share/appdata/emacs.appdata.xml
/usr/share/applications/emacs.desktop
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/128x128/apps/emacs.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/emacs.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/emacs.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/emacs.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/emacs.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/emacs.svg
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/mimetypes/emacs-document.svg

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install emacs on CentOS 8 using yum and dnf.