List of Emacs Starter Kits

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

• 〔 spacemacs https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs 〕
• 〔 emacs24-starter-kit By Eric Schulte. At https://github.com/eschulte/emacs24-starter-kit 〕
• 〔 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 〕

Following are newish:

• 〔 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 works best for you.

Emacs Binary Distros

Download Emacs for Windows, Mac, Linux

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: How to Install Packages Using ELPA, MELPA]

Here's basic config cookbook: How to Set Emacs's User Interface.

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's the Best Setup for Coding Language X?

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

thanks to Rafał Babinicz for tips.