yay-evil-emacs VS emacs-emojify

That said, I found that setting up evil wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. If you want to see how simple it can be, you can take a look at the pull request I linked in the original post. I can also recommend taking a look at this config for another example of how setting it up can actually be very simple: https://github.com/ianyepan/yay-evil-emacs

I personally also maintain a lightweight config with better defaults, aimed at new Emacs users, perhaps it could help you too: https://github.com/ianyepan/yay-evil-emacs

And here for an unopinionated literate config I maintain: https://github.com/ianyepan/yay-evil-emacs

I suggest you look at other publically shared configs and "distributions". E.g. yay-evil-emacs is one such "distribution", and is different from the author's personal config.

If you feel lost in basic customization of Emacs, perhaps my project yay-evil could help. It's fairly simple to follow (if I may say so myself) and has over 270 stars -- so at least quite a few beginners have found it useful.

This is not a video styled tutorial, but I actively maintain a yay-evil framework aimed at beginners to help them build their own vanilla config. Feel free to give it a try! https://github.com/ianpan870102/yay-evil-emacs

I'd check out Yay-Evil and Corgi.

This should be the quickest way to get emoji display in emacs: https://github.com/iqbalansari/emacs-emojify

That said, the awesome emacs-emojify package solves this problem by providing the command M-x emojify-insert-emoji, which lets you browse PNG emojis with your completion framework of choice (ivy/counsel, ido, etc.).