How do I get emacs on a newly installed Fedora 20 system?

Question

I have upgraded from Linux Fedora 12 to Fedora 20 by buying a new computer, and the shop has kindly installed Linux for me from the DVD I bought for the purpose. I assume he did the most basic installation he could. It is all strange coming from 12, and I am a bit lost. The first thing I tried to do was use emacs, but it is not recognised as a command.

I had already looked for emacs like this

[root@localhost ~]# cd /usr/share/emacs/
[root@localhost emacs]# ls
site-lisp
[root@localhost emacs]# 

So it looked to me as if emacs was there and just not found.

[root@localhost emacs]# emacs
bash: emacs: command not found... 
[root@localhost emacs]# yum install emacs
Loaded plugins: langpacks, refresh-packagekit
http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/linux/i386/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14]   curl#6 - "Could not resolve host: linuxdownload.adobe.com"
Trying other mirror.
Error: Cannot retrieve metalink for repository: fedora/20/i386. Please verify its path and try again
[root@localhost emacs]# 

So, please what is wrong, and how do I get out of it?

In answering this, please treat me as a complete novice, so I can fully understand the answer. I don't immediately recognise most of the cryptic names for things, nor is it easy to discover, out of context, what they mean.

==============================================================

That was my original question, so, in response to several answers I tried all this:

[root@localhost emacs]# yum search emacs
Loaded plugins: langpacks, refresh-packagekit
http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/linux/i386/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] curl#6 - "Could not resolve host: linuxdownload.adobe.com"
Trying other mirror.
Error: Cannot retrieve metalink for repository: fedora/20/i386. Please verify its path and try again
[root@localhost emacs]# yum check-update
Loaded plugins: langpacks, refresh-packagekit
adobe-linux-i386                                         |  951 B     00:00     
fedora/20/i386/metalink                                  |  34 kB     00:00     
http://ftp.ps.pl/pub/Linux/fedora-linux/releases/20/Everything/i386/os/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] curl#6 - "Could not resolve host: ftp.ps.pl"
Trying other mirror.
   .....

and so on, miles of it, until I stopped it, thus:

... http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/MIRRORS/fedora.redhat.com/linux/releases/20/Everything/i386/os/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] curl#6 - "Could not resolve host: sunsite.mff.cuni.cz"
Trying other mirror.
^Z
[1]+  Stopped    yum check-update             

... and then tried this as well:

[root@localhost emacs]# yum refresh
Loaded plugins: langpacks, refresh-packagekit
No such command: refresh. Please use /usr/bin/yum --help
[root@localhost emacs]# yum install emacs
Loaded plugins: langpacks, refresh-packagekit
Existing lock /var/run/yum.pid: another copy is running as pid 4647.
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...
The other application is: yum
Memory :  24 M RSS ( 51 MB VSZ)
Started: Wed Feb 26 15:31:47 2014 - 06:04 ago
State  : Traced/Stopped, pid: 4647
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiti .....

And there I gave up

I would be grateful for more suggestions on haw to get out of this impasse. Please, please, only answer if you do really recognise the problem and do know how to fix it. I have spent a lot of time trying other similar ideas from very kindly intended people who thought they might have a solution. Perhaps the only way to resolve it might be to re-install Fedora, I haven't got any data to lose yet, but that does seem a dangerous and long winded way to go about it

Answer 1

After the problem in my question I found yum failed every time with

Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...

I've been trying to get over this for four days,asking questions all over the place, finally I tried this:

[root@localhost owner]# ps < /var/run/yum.pid
  PID TTY          TIME CMD
 4126 pts/0    00:00:00 su
 4138 pts/0    00:00:00 bash
 4181 pts/0    00:00:00 yum
 4262 pts/0    00:00:00 ps
[root@localhost owner]# kill 4181
[root@localhost owner]# ps < /var/run/yum.pid
  PID TTY          TIME CMD
 4126 pts/0    00:00:00 su
 4138 pts/0    00:00:00 bash
 4181 pts/0    00:00:00 yum
 4276 pts/0    00:00:00 ps
[root@localhost owner]# cat /var/run/yum.pid
4181[root@localhost owner]# kill -9 4181
[1]+  Killed                  yum install dconf-editor
[root@localhost owner]# cat /var/run/yum.pid
4181[root@localhost owner]# ps < /var/run/yum.pid
  PID TTY          TIME CMD
 4126 pts/0    00:00:00 su
 4138 pts/0    00:00:00 bash
 4373 pts/0    00:00:00 ps
[root@localhost owner]# yum install xemacs
. . . and off it went

and now I have a working XEmacs editor

---

After a lot of frustration I decide to try a well-established version of Fedora instead of the newly released 20 installed by my computer supplier. I have now installed version 17, and, so far, all the problems seem to have been solve. I can now use yum with no trouble. I also was apparently missing a lot of the software, like gnuplot and ghostscript. I suspect that the installer of Fedora 20 had not included the software developer's repositories.

So, now my question is answered, and I have, fingers crossed, upgraded from Fedora 12 to a decent working Fedora again.

Answer 2

It is just that emacs isn't in the base set of packages. In the end, POSIX mandates vi(1), not emacs, as the default system editor.