Any good recommendations for a total noob who wants to try out emacs?

Hi everyone. I have been toying around with the idea of trying out emacs for quite a while now and I really wanna give it a go now. However, I am completely lost and need guidance about how to actually use it. Any recommendations are very welcome. Thank you all in advance!

c-h t will invoke the builtin tutorial which gets you started on basic editing keystrokes. (c-h ? shows lots of other builtin help.) m-x info leads to several builtin manuals, on (among many other topics) emacs and elisp (short for 'emacs lisp'), the language in which most of emacs is written.

Also https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/index.html is a good start.

There are loads of preconfigured configs you can use. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/StarterKits I ended up in doom eMacs and am still using. Can look around and see which one you like.

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I got a lot out of starting off with this fella's minimum.el file: https://github.com/olivertaylor/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs/cookbook/minimum.el It's pretty small and well commented so it's not too tough to run though. It starts you off with some basic packages that you install via `M-x package-install-selected-packages` (M-x means Alt+x). It also binds C-<return> (control+return) to a context menu that gives you shortcuts to some basic editor operations. And it gives you a simple light/dark theme (https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes). It's a nice, gentle introduction to Emacs, Lisp, packages, editing and customizing.

Watch the Systemcrafter guide, if you want to learn how to setup a config file. You'll probably have to learn it sooner or later anyway, even if you go for preconfigured ones. Will help you avoid pitfalls like learning all default bindings to later drop them for alternative ones

If you familiar with Vim key binding, try doom emacs. That was my first real meet with Emacs. Now is on all my machines for at least 2years

I was in your position a month ago and now feel pretty comfortable using Emacs for editing text files, org-mode, as part of GTD productivity system and programming. I would recommend you to follow my path and use pre-configured version of Emacs which is Spacemacs. It is set up to give you a faster start, but you can tweak it as much as you would like. You can use it with default key bindings or with evil-mode taken from Vim. I have chosen second option and do not regret anything. It is really smooth experience and fun to use. I was learning Emacs as follows: 1. Follow vim tutor using Vim. (I know you want to use Emacs but I would recommend to start with that if you want to use evil-mode, you will finish it in a 30 minutes) 2. To better learn Vim key bindings follow this three lessons [First ](https://thevaluable.dev/vim-commands-beginner/) [Second ](https://thevaluable.dev/vim-intermediate/) [Third](https://thevaluable.dev/vim-advanced/) 3. Download Spacemacs and follow [Spacemacs beginners tutorial](https://develop.spacemacs.org/doc/BEGINNERS_TUTORIAL.html) 4. Read [Spacemacs documentation ](https://develop.spacemacs.org/doc/DOCUMENTATION.html) 5. Now decide what you want to explore in more depth, for example: - look at other spacemacs layers which give you a ton of easy customization options - learn org-mode [Quickstart ](https://orgmode.org/quickstart.html) - anything that catches your interest 6. Then by using it for the actual work you will learn by doing, and googling or duckduckgoing ;) I know that learning Vim basics before even starting with Emacs can look a little strange at first, but this was how I did it and now I consider it a great decision. It took me around a week to grasp basics of Emacs following the above steps. Emacs can look intimidating at first and so many people claim how hard it is to learn. Of course it is harder at first than using regular text editor but after a short amount of time a little bit of learning and playing around you will get a really rewarding experience and a productivity boost. Also remember that Emacs is so much more than simple text editor. Do not let anything discourage you, and have fun!

if you are looking for a buddy that can follow your Emacs journey, you may be interested in [https://github.com/ag91/emacs-buddy](https://github.com/ag91/emacs-buddy)

Did you do the included tutorial? It will teach a lot of basic but essential stuff. To start the tuto, press C-h t (aka press Ctrl+h then press t) Personal advice from another beginner: try to learn Emacs from scratch (I quickly git lost using premade versions of Emacs). I started with an empty config file that I slowly populate, learning along.

At first the keybindings are a little bit of a mindfuck. But use it for a few weeks and it’ll become second nature. Try to use the default key bindings. It felt weird at first but it all started to make sense for me after a week. The book, mastering eMacs, is a great resource and well worth the $.

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'Do the tutorial: C-h t, checkout[ Mastering Emacs](https://www.masteringemacs.org/) or [Emacs Wiki](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SiteMap) for many good tips and post your questions here on reddit or even better to [help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org](https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnu-emacs).

Like everyone said you should go through the eMacs tutorial using C-h t. After that you should get a package named “which-key”. It’ll basically display the key bindings following the command you entered. It’s really good for beginners when you’re still learning commands. You should definitely try “org-mode”, it can be used to make todo lists, notes, do literate programming and much more. Other than that it might be an unpopular opinion but change “caps lock to ctrl key”. It’s much easier to reach it and it’ll possibly save you from wrist pain. There’s much more to eMacs which cannot be covered in a single comment so I suggest you to look into other peoples’ config files and upgrade your config on the way.

Emacs has thousands of commands at your disposal. Sometimes these commands can be triggered by a keyboard shortcut (a "keybinding"), but they can always be triggered by typing Alt-X (what we call `M-x`). Though there are many, it is easy to learn all about all the commands. Learn how to navigate the help system: - `C-h f` search (with tab completion) for the name of an `M-x` command. Great little search engine if you have an idea of what command you want but not exactly what it is called. Pressing enter on a selection it shows the `*Help*` screen for that function. - `C-h v` search (with tab completion) for a configuration variable, otherwise same as `C-h f` - `C-h w` enter a command name, if it is bound to a key, this tells you which key you can press to trigger that command. - `C-h k <Key-Chord>` tells you what command is run by typing that key chord. - `C-h l` "lossage," if you accidentally type a key chord and triggered some command but you don't know what it was, this screen shows you a history of the commands you most recently executed so you can figure out what you did, and that can help you to figure out how to undo it (or do it again, if it did something you thought was cool). - `C-h m` show all the keybindings for the current major and minor mode. This is handy if you are using a mode/app you aren't familiar with and you want an idea of all the commands you can do. - `C-h r` jump to the Emacs "info" manual - `C-h i` jump to the system-wide "info" manual, a menu of all "info" manual documentation installed. - `q` closes the `*Help*` screen and the `*info*` screen and puts you back to where you were. - `C-x o` switches your cursor between split-screens without the mouse. Also, learn how to read the Emacs "info" manual. When you are in the Emacs info manual browser: - `m` is the "menu search" command -- not a pull-down menu, but "menu" is what they call the table of contents. So pressing `m` lets you search for a section of the manual by keyword, and it provides tab completion. - `i` is the "index search" command -- also with tab completion, lets you search for an indexed term (much like searching through the index in the back of a textbook). - `l` "last", like the "back" button in your web browser - `r` opposite of `l`, like the "forward" button in your web browser. - `L` (capital L, as opposed to lowercase) shows your info browser history. - `t` go back to the table of contents - `s` full text search by regular expression, kind of like Ctrl-F in the web browser but scans across the whole manual. Use comma `,` and period `.` to jump to the next/previous match (respectively). These info manual search commands are usually more effective than using Google since you are searching through a much narrower domain of knowledge.