gcmh VS crafted-emacs

cf. https://github.com/emacsmirror/gcmh (the author's [=Andrea Corallo's] Emacs package "GCMH - the Garbage Collector Magic Hack")

A lot of people use way higher values than 800 KB without any problems. As a matter of fact, I've been using 256 MB for a very long time, haven't noticed any issues with it. So I wouldn't call 1 GB madness, it can be perfectly fine in some cases, especially if one uses gcmh, so it has a high chance that GCs will happen when the user doesn't interact with emacs (I also setup emacs to do GC when emacs loses focus. This means that GC pause is invisible most of the time for me). I strongly prefer very rare, short GC pauses than microstuttering all the time. Also, some operations apply a lot of pressure to the memory system, and do hundreds of GCs with the default setting, so most of the CPU time is spent in the GC when these operations run. Increasing gc-cons-threshold makes such operations much faster which means less pauses.

One possible solution is to switch to a LSP approach. You should also take a look at the garbage-collector-magic-hack package: https://github.com/emacsmirror/gcmh

If you experience some lag, my first advice would be to install the GCMH package. It basically changes the garbage-collection rules to ensure that most garbage collection will happen in small bouts while Emacs is idle. After installing it I've never had my Emacs lag on me. This wouldn't address the retina-display issues you mentioned, but I've never experienced those with emacs-plus.

I've seen gcmh recommended as a library that configures the garbage collector for you. Not sure if it is truly a "one size fits all" solution though.

I’d add that for 1) beacon is a good package. For 2), this may be an issue where you have multiple emacs configuration files. This is a serious problem. 3) be patient, and use the magic GC hack. To add to that, you should probably set the GC threshold to be high. 4) projectile? 5)emacs -nw.

Keep an eye on Crafted Emacs which has a v2Beta release branch. It's been evolving. The v2Beta is a rewrite. It aims to provide a minimalist leg up on vanilla Emacs for new Emacs users. It's goal is to take you from first steps to a point where you have learned a great deal and built your configuration. Then you may be comfortable ditching the Crafted Emacs boilerplate configuration entirely. Think of it as a starter kit. Follow SystemCrafters on YouTube (live stream mostly) & Matrix (they are leaving Discord). Despite the live stream being lengthy, there is much to be learned as you bear witness to David figuring things out. Over time, you pickup on those techniques such as looking up a variable state, reviewing functions, evaluating snippets of Elisp in real time, etc. Also recommend, Mastering Emacs as a fantastic ebook with free updates. Once 29.1 ships, no doubt, there will be a free update to the ebook.

I'd recommend you have a look at crafted-emacs. It's an example of how far Emacs can actually go without third-party packages. Then you can add minimal packages (completion and specific tool integrations) to further enhance the experience.

For me it's quite stable except some issues I had with vertico. Anyways, I first started to rewrite my doom config into plain vanilla emacs (with org mode literate configs), and then I discovered crafted which allowed me to remove some code with commonly set sane defaults, e.g. stuff from https://github.com/SystemCrafters/crafted-emacs/blob/master/modules/crafted-defaults.el.

I have been surprised at how many people have so ardently defended only using built-ins and raw package.el and their own janky ensure methods when use-package was available and did it all better. And, it even lets you configure Emacs itself (not just packages), as well as seamlessly letting you try different package management tools like straight.el. Getting it into Emacs itself hopefully makes this a more prevalent way of showing users how to craft their own config.

If you need a staring point for configuring there's some nice light ones like emacs-bedrock and crafted-emacs, and also some fully pre-configured Emacs distributions that you can choose from (though those look harder to configure to one's personal needs to me, but I haven't tried them so wouldn't know).

I'll second https://github.com/SystemCrafters/crafted-emacs

And if you find yourself between the two extremes, perhaps https://github.com/SystemCrafters/crafted-emacs