Basic customization to make emacs more modern

I just started using emacs again after 10 years :-). I'm using the basic GNU Emacs distribution for Windows 64. Without having to use a hot-rodded version, I was looking for some info on a few basic customization tips that almost anyone new to emacs would want to do. For example, I figured out how to change fonts, window size and basic foreground/background colors and put those commands into my "init.el" file, so now it looks better (and is more usable for me). It would be nice to figure out how to make Emacs use the mouse for basic cut and paste from the clipboard. also, if you are in the command line, it would be great if the up-arrow key would give you command history (is that possible ?). Is there a list somewhere of the top "5" things a new emacs user would want to do to make Emacs more useful/friendly out of the box ? ... and how to do it ?

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It might sound obvious, but going through the emacs tutorial mentioned in the start screen of an unconfigured emacs at least once is highly recommended. As for customising emacs' look, I don't enjoy fiddling about for hours on end.. I just chose a "good enough" theme from [https://emacsthemes.com/](https://emacsthemes.com/) (doom-Iosvkem in my case). And the rest was, I'm not gonna lie, a sometimes frustrating, but overall highly rewarding journey of learning how to use the package manager, moving over to use-package and reading a lot of READMEs for packages on how to install/configure them.

Yes, I'll check out the tutorial. I used emacs mostly in the 90's for professional development and fortunately years later I'm starting to recall all the basic commands . I was not much of emacs hacker. We basically all used xemacs in my group and we shared basic configuration information. Thanks for the themes, this was definitely an eye opener. I was not aware of this site. At the same time, I didn't have the package manager setup properly (I just figured that out) and I've now installed the "solarized-theme". very nice !

I started off with xemacs in the early 2000s, because it already had the package manager similar to what GNU emacs is having nowadays :) Now, twenty years later, I still know little to no lisp, but it's enough to follow installation/configuration instructions on a package's github.. Things have come a long way and have become a lot more user-friendly.. But with many concepts stemming from the very early days of unix, it's still a bit weird(hence the pointer to the tutorial)..

You could check out ErgoEmacs. Has a bunch of extensions to make it more like a standard app of your OS. Things like ctrl-x ctrl-c ctrl-v cut copy and paste. Also, enable toolbar-mode and menu-mode. Also, try out helm, it's a completion system that replaces the standard minibuffer with a more graphical alternative.

I’m working on a live graphics coding project and evaluating use of Common Lisp with eMacs + sly for that purpose. Since ultimately I want to show graphics in a live setting , it’s essential that I don’t have a clunky thing that looks antiquated so the themes definitely help. It’s almost better to look antiquated but minimalist. I need to figure out how to get rid of the menu bar , but I think it adds value right now to help me remember the keyboard cmds.

I usually just do: (setq emacs-version (number-to-string most-positive-fixnum))

The things you list are things it does out of the box. Are you sure you are using the basic GNU distribution and not some masochist's customized version that disables anything remotely GUI-like?

Worked like a charm, thanks!

> if you are in the command line, it would be great if the up-arrow key would give you command history Maybe you could try `vertico`, it will list and sort recent commands.

Definitely look into the builtin Emacs tutorial to get a hang of the editor first. There are also many Emacs playlists online that help a lot of people. I personally also maintain a lightweight config with better defaults, aimed at new Emacs users, perhaps it could help you too: https://github.com/ianyepan/yay-evil-emacs

I think, there are settings to disable the button- and menu bars in the menu bar :D You only need to find the command to save then settings, then ;) But even without that, it's something as easy as "(menu-bar-mode -1)" in your init file, if I remember correctly.

Will do, but I came from eMacs in the 90’s so the basic commands not new to me.