Deep-Dive with Prot: Emacs, Philosophy, Debian, Life & Open-Source Ethics

Protesilaos Stavrou. philosopher, programmer and the voice behind some of the most thoughtful Emacs content on the internet.

Link to the video:

https://youtu.be/b4nV0jCHwGQ

What's the best way to support me?

https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough

Timeline:

00:00:00 - Highlights

00:01:15 - "Neovim vs Emacs" video is how I heard about Prot

00:02:24 - Wildfires in Cyprus July 2025

00:10:01 - What are you, a philosopher, programmer or what?

00:12:05 - What is your main medium, website or youtube?

00:13:45 - Why did you decide to get started with YouTube?

00:14:51 - Did you receive formal education as a programmer? How did all this computer stuff got started

00:16:44 - Thoughts on Windows and macOS?

00:19:37 - Prot uses Debian, like a real chad. He was in Arch before

00:22:00 - Any issues with outdated packages in Debian? What about security updates?

00:23:07 - Thoughts on flatpaks

00:23:57 - What's the difference between open source and free software

00:27:40 - Thoughts on supporting open source maintainers

00:29:07 - I (linkarzu) feel open source like a 1 way relationship in which the maintainer has to give and not expect anything in return?

00:33:18 - Remove the stigma when a free software maintainer asks for money

00:34:45 - Thoughts on Neovim?

00:36:05 - Images in Neovim, variable font size in terminals hopefully soon

00:38:55 - What are the different ways of working with emacs? Evil, space, traditional, what do you recommend?

00:42:02 - What about using the ctrl key with emacs?

00:42:52 - Give default emacs a fair chance

00:44:38 - Did you remap your Ctrl key?

00:45:40 - Thoughts on homerow mods, Prot's keyboard

00:48:13 - The delay in homerow mods and false positives

00:50:44 - The long spacebar on laptops does not make sense

00:51:32 - Why a light theme if we live in a dark theme world? Demo modus-operandi, modus-vivendi and other themes

00:56:05 - In a video you mentioned you prefer taking notes in plain text and switch to org when needed

01:02:11 - Paste images in AVIF inside Neovim, also view images

01:02:48 - Some folks think that viewing images in Neovim is not useful

01:05:04 - Create private or public GitHub repo from within Neovim and extending outside to your Operating System

01:08:58 - Prot demo on org: email, calendar, and way more

01:14:55 - How long is your emacs config? 18,000 lines

01:15:51 - Magit git client, allows you to also merge, issues, PRs

01:16:57 - How do you get notifications in Emacs, for example for emails? notmuch-indicator

01:19:56 - Packages for auto-formatting and moving around parentheses

01:23:36 - Neovim demo on how I manage tasks and fold headings, emacs demo as well

01:28:00 - Prot uses multiple emacs frames

01:32:12 - How I navigate projects with tmux on the neovim side

01:34:37 - You can put emacs frames in different workspaces

01:36:09 - The beauty of organizing your life in org mode, email and calendar

01:40:53 - What is LISP?

01:42:00 - Fennel to write LISP but convert it to Lua

01:43:00 - Single threading issues on emacs?

01:46:49 - Thoughts on alcohol and substance abuse?

01:55:47 - Thoughts on a supreme being?

02:11:00 - Thoughts on physical activity

02:13:18 - Thoughts on material objects

02:16:10 - Let's see the puppies

02:16:42 - Thoughts on AI

02:18:29 - Do you use qwerty or colemak?

02:19:00 - What is the best way to support you monetarily?