My actual .emacs file has a ton of things unrelated to this, so here are the relevant bits: ;; Make the window simpler (tool-bar-mode -1) (scroll-b

My actual .emacs file has a ton of things unrelated to this, so here are the relevant bits: ;; Make the window simpler (tool-bar-mode -1) (scroll-bar-mode -1) (menu-bar-mode -1) (fringe-mode 0) Powerline and the color theme are installed separately. You can get powerline using the new package manager through M-x package-list-packages. You might have to configure some additional package sources first: (require 'package) (add-to-list 'package-archives '("marmalade" . "http://marmalade-repo.org /packages/")) (add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "http://melpa.milkbox.net/packages/")) (package-initialize) You can then run powerline using (require 'powerline) It might take a little more configuration to get the powerline colors matching to what you want. You can also customize the shape of the separator: it doesn't have to be an arrow. Unfortunately, the blackboard theme in the package manager is using the old color-theme package which has been made obsolete with Emacs 24. You should use the version ported to the new and improved theming mechanism[1]. [1]: https://github.com/don9z/blackboard-theme https://github.com/don9z/blackboard-theme Download that and put it in ~/.emacs.d/themes. Now you can set it up with: (setq custom-theme-directory "~/.emacs.d/themes/") (setq custom-safe-themes t) (load-theme 'blackboard) I hope that helps.