emfy VS prelude

Vanilla. A good starting point for you is probably Emfy - https://github.com/susam/emfy

I recommend Susam Pal's attempt to make Emacs more approachable for beginners: https://github.com/susam/emfy. He provides a line-by-line explanation of a simple config file.

That is true. But it’s pretty overwhelming for a lot of folks. I was a spacemacs user. I tried to rebuild what I liked about it. It was a lot, and I didn’t quite get it there.

I finally found a good compromise though. I started over with this confing: https://github.com/susam/emfy

From there, I only needed a handful of packages and a few dozen lines of config to get to an editor that was comfy.

I struggled to make the change. I think I tried half a dozen times to go from (neo)vim to Emacs and it never stuck. My problem was that I kept reaching for spacemacs and Doom Emacs, etc., right out of the gate, and I would be mystified by Emacs itself and Emacs Lisp as a result.

Two things helped get me into Emacs full-time (and this is after > 15 years of using vim):

1. I went step-by-step through Susam's Emfy Emacs config [0]. That helped me understand some of the basics at a foundational level. I extended that base configuration a little bit and became comfortable with the environment.

2. I then went step-by-step through the entire "Emacs from Scratch" playlist that System Crafters put out [1]. I pushed my personal configuration pretty far with that over the course of 2-3 months.

I eventually moved to Doom Emacs and married in pieces of my own configuration. That's been my daily driver for months now.

[0]: https://github.com/susam/emfy

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEoMzSkcN8oPH1au7H6B7...

Just have a weekend learning Emacs + Lisp and make your own opinion. This configuration (https://github.com/susam/emfy) is a great start. If you like it - use it, if you don't - throw it away.

Rather than one of the fat and opinionated "distros" (doom, spacemacs) I like emacs for you. It will set you up with a minimal config that you can learn from and add to as you go.

> I forgot how absolutely horrible the new user experience is...

The bbatsov/prelude project was started in 2011 to help address that problem. I started using it not long after that, and it's been a joy to use ever since.

And by "started using" I mean I forked it on GitHub, stared personalizing, and then merging/rebasing from upstream ever since at my own leisure.

https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude

https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/

From 2011 to present, not everyone in the Emacs community feels bbatsov's Emacs Prelude makes the best/correct decisions, but given how long Emacs has been around and how large the community has been over time, what can you really expect?

It's certainly a lighter-weight starter kit compared to Doom Emacs and Spacemacs. (I'm not knocking those projects!). I've also looked at some of the newer starter kits mentioned in other comments here and previous HN threads; they seem okay to me, just reinventing a lot of the same "wheels" you'll find in Prelude but in a less refined form in many cases... such are the freedoms, joys, and trials of Free Software.

If I recall correctly, on my mac I had an issue with the meta and super keys. I had to rebind Meta to Cmd and Super to Opt. Im pretty sure I used Bozhidar Batsov's solution for this.

Another reason for you to stick to Emacs is Emacs Lisp. If you enjoy writing lisp you are not going to find a better piece of software written in any other lisp language. I prefer common lisp to elisp (alot!) but this is a fact in my opinion. Plus elisp is somewhat similar to common lisp and learning/appreciating the differrnces between the two will make you a better lisp programmer.

https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude/blob/master/core/prelude-...

I have based my emacs config on Emacs Prelude from u/bbatsov, because I did not trust starting from vanilla emacs.

When some days ago I decided to use org-mode again, I didn't use Doom Emacs, and it was the best decision that I've made. Instead, I used Prelude, which is a very simple and powerful Emacs config, and it's much less opinionated than Doom Emacs and Spacemacs. Then I disabled the Prelude theme, and combined it with Nano-Emacs. Now I have a very simple Emacs config, which provides me with some of the best tools, and also a very beautiful and elegant theme. I can change everything I want very easily, customized it to my needs.

How do you know? You said you want "fully setup" :) Prelude? Spacemacs? Your own version?

Thanks :)… it was originally heavily inspired by Emacs Prelude, but has since drifted quite far from it.