> I forgot how absolutely horrible the new user experience is... The bbatsov/prelude project was started in 2011 to help address that problem. I started using

> I forgot how absolutely horrible the new user experience is... The bbatsov/prelude project was started in 2011 to help address that problem. I started using it not long after that, as a new Emacs user, and it's been a joy to use ever since. And by "started using" I mean I forked it on GitHub, stared personalizing, and then merging/rebasing upstream at my own leisure. https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/ https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/ From 2011 to present, not everyone in the Emacs community feels bbatsov's Prelude makes the best/correct decisions, but given how long Emacs has been around and how large its community has been over time, what can you really expect? It's certainly a lighter-weight starter kit compared to Doom Emacs and Spacemacs. (I'm not knocking those projects!). I've also looked at some of the newer starter kits mentioned in other comments here and in previous HN threads; they seem okay to me, just reinventing a lot of the same "wheels" you'll find in Prelude, but in a less refined form... such are the freedoms, joys, and challenges of Free Software.