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Comment by lottin | Hacker News Reader

Agreed, although it's also true that vanilla Emacs is quite spartan and has many questionable defaults. In my opinion it would be much better if plain Emacs provided a nicer user experience out of the box, thus reducing the need for customisation and external packages which is a big barrier to entry for new users.

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http://spacemacs.org/ solves this exact problem. It's a set of packages, with consistent UX.

The problem I have with Spacemacs is that it's almost too fancy. Even as a moderately experienced Emacs user I found the defaults overwhelming. As an example, it displays lots of incomprehensible to the new user information on the bottom that changes with file type. Compare that with ye olde Emacs starter kit, which just fixed up some basic key bindings and gave it a more modern colour scheme.

Personally I find that a better starting point.

> Even as a moderately experienced Emacs user I found the defaults overwhelming.

I agree. There is a lot of "magic" going on, and it doesn't help that Spacemacs is a lot slower and less stable than my less-intensive personal customization.

Of course, that's the problem with any significant starter kit. As a new user, now you don't just have to learn emacs, you have to learn emacs + whatever heavy modifications they've done to emacs.

Spacemacs is a lot slower and less stable

In principle, I liked Spacemacs, but stability is a big problem. Often certain org functionality stops working, etc. I now have a reasonably stable snapshot and I just don't update ELPA/MELPA packages anymore, because the risk is simply too big that things break (yes, I know that you can rollback).

Another problem that I have been running into is that Mitsuharu Yamamoto's emacs-mac, which is IMO by far the nicest Mac version regularly seems to trigger a bug where WindowServer starts using 100% CPU. I haven't really nailed it down (I only notice it later when the fans start getting loud), except that it only occurs sometimes when I run emacs-mac.

Once you find what you like about spacemacs, it is usually better to start with a raw configuration and add those things that you found and remove everything else. You end up with a much faster and lighter editor.

FWIW my .emacs file is less than two dozen lines long and I spend most of my day in it. The only external package it loads is magit

Do you have a good set of basic customisations that anyone using Emacs should do?

I'm not sure how you are with vim bindings but in my opinion evil mode helps a lot with productivity.

And spacemacs is a great starting point.

Or God mode.

You've probably heard about it, but Mastering Emacs is fantastic.

https://masteringemacs.org/reading-guide

https://github.com/technomancy/better-defaults aims to be "a small number of better defaults for Emacs".

I use it, though I'm not a heavy emacs user.

I think ido mode in the mini buffer is a requirement for smooth emacs use. And of course, installing any editing modes for particular program languages that you use.

Install ido-mode and projectile as a bare minimum. All these can be installed with M-x package-install, or you can do something like this https://github.com/wcummings/dotemacs/blob/master/modes/my-p... to automagically install your packages.

(setq ido-enable-flex-matching t) (setq ido-everywhere t) (setq ido-create-new-buffer 'always) (ido-mode 1)

(projectile-global-mode)

Maybe enable flycheck globally if you're used to syntax checking.

(global-flycheck-mode)

Also worth learning TRAMP if you're used to sshing into boxes and running vim. M-x info, C-s tramp.

Get rid of the waste of space toolbar:

  (tool-bar-mode -1)

And install a nice theme, whatever floats your boat, I use a solarized theme [1]. The default theme is gross.

  (setq custom-theme-directory "~/.emacs.d/theme")
  (setq custom-safe-themes t)
  (when (display-graphic-p)
    (load-theme 'my-solarized))

I use eshell, I think the plan9 smart shell features are nice:

  (require 'em-smart)

Basically includes additional editing features in eshell. It creates keybindings to edit previous commands and page through the output of commands.

Make CTRL L clear eshell

  (defun eshell/clear ()
    "Clear the eshell buffer"
    (interactive)
    (let ((inhibit-read-only t))
      (erase-buffer)
      (eshell-send-input)))

  (defun my-eshell-mode-hook ()
    (local-set-key (kbd "C-c e") 'end-of-buffer)
    (local-set-key (kbd "C-l") 'eshell/clear)
    (eshell-smart-initialize))

  (add-hook 'eshell-mode-hook 'my-eshell-mode-hook)

Line numbers, but only when you're editing code (GUI and text):

  (when (not (display-graphic-p))
    (setq linum-format "%4d | "))

  (defcustom linum-disabled-modes-list '(eshell-mode wl-summary-mode compilation-mode org-mode text-mode dired-mode doc-view-mode image-mode rcirc-mode)
    "* List of modes disabled when global linum mode is on"
    :type '(repeat (sexp :tag "Major mode"))
    :tag " Major modes where linum is disabled: "
    :group 'linum)

  ;; override linum-on because there is no good way to   disable global-linum-mode
  ;; on a per-mode basis
  (defun linum-on ()
    (unless (or (minibufferp)
                (member major-mode linum-disabled-modes-list)
                (string-match "*" (buffer-name))
                (> (buffer-size) 3000000))
 (linum-mode 1)))

"Smooth scrolling"

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SmoothScrolling

[1] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wcummings/dotemacs/master/...

- grab a decent theme

- if you're on a mac set the command modifier to meta

- ido mode

- transform yes or no into y or n

- Disable the bell and the visual bell

- cua mode (this begins to be personal so I'll stop there)

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