gcmh VS emacs-faff-theme

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.

But generally I prefer a light theme and for light themes I want much less intense contrast through a relatively strong background, like faff theme. So many light themes have white, or near-white, backgrounds that I find just jarring, but then some others go with very low contrast that I also find hard work.

I'm pretty partial to mellow tones not so very different from this (I use faff theme), though to my taste this looks too monochrome and low contrast and the color of the background asserts itself a bit too much. Though we don't see code so it's hard to tell what full colors look like.

I've been using faff-theme for a while - a little darker background, a little higher contrast.

I do like the faff theme though, which is extremely mellow. It's kind of uncool, but comfortable as hell in day or night. I feel like it's the socks + sandals of themes ;).

I like the faff theme which is based on default, but a darker background and a few tweaks like bold keywords.