List of Emacs Starter Kits, year 2013

By Xah Lee. Date: 2013-09-17. Last updated: 2022-02-09.

For emacs beginners, you might be confused by emacs's configuration complexity. There are several kits that help. The most popular are:

[spacemacs http://spacemacs.org/ ]
doom emacs https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs
[emacs prelude by Bozhidar Batsov. At https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude ]
[Steve Purcell's emacs.d By Steve Purcell. At https://github.com/purcell/emacs.d ]
[emacs24-starter-kit By Eric Schulte. At https://github.com/eschulte/emacs24-starter-kit ]
[emacs-live https://github.com/overtone/emacs-live ]
[graphene by Robert Dallas Gray. At https://github.com/rdallasgray/graphene ]
[scimax. For scientist/engineer for reproducible research and publishing. Focus on LaTeX and org-mode. https://github.com/jkitchin/scimax ]

Which emacs starter kit is best?

There's no simple answer. You just have to try them and decide which is best for you.

Emacs Binary Distros

Download Emacs for Windows/Mac

Use Plain GNU Emacs

Alternatively, you can just use plain GNU Emacs. It works fine out of the box. When you actually need something, search for it in packages. [see Emacs: Install Package with ELPA/MELPA]

Here's basic config cookbook: Emacs Init Setup .

Ultimately, you'll have to eventually learn emacs, bit by bit, over the years. That's the disadvantage of emacs as well as its power.

What is the Best Setup for Coding Language X?

Emacs: What's the Best Setup for Coding {Python, Java, C++, Web Dev, etc}?

2013-09-18 thanks to Rafał Babinicz for tips.