Getting to grips with Emacs is not easy. In fact, it can be one of the steepest learning curves for newcomers. Learning the concepts and being productive with this editor to produce your own dotfiles from afresh takes time and a fair chunk of effort.
But there’s a much easier way to start being productive. There are numerous projects that produce their own package of configuration. These configuration frameworks take the vanilla Emacs and add their own configuration files, pre-defined internal commands, and configurations for various plug-ins (known as packages). In essence these configuration framework replace your .emacs.d directory, offering an easy to use Emacs configuration for Emacs newcomers and lots of additional power for Emacs power users. The configuration frameworks are sometimes labelled Emacs distributions.
In our eyes, these configuration frameworks are a stepping stone. You can use these configuration frameworks, tailor them to your own preferences, and, in less time, fully master the power of this operating system editor.
The chart below presents the best configuration frameworks available for Emacs.
Let’s explore the 5 configuration frameworks at hand. Click the links in the table below to learn about each framework.
| Configuration Framework for Emacs | |
|---|---|
| Doom Emacs | Highly polished configuration framework for Emacs |
| Spacemacs | Extremely polished configuration framework for Emacs |
| Prelude | Emacs distribution that aims to enhance the default Emacs experience |
| Purcell Emacs | Emacs configuration bundle with batteries included |
| Centaur Emacs | A Fancy and Fast Emacs Configuration |
And if you want to use multiple Emacs configurations together, we recommend Chemacs2. It’s a refined Emacs profile switcher.
Over the years, one of the most emotive areas in the world of Linux is the choice of text editor. Some people are strong advocates of Vim, others prefer Emacs. And there’s tons of other text editors available with strong backing. Having robust opinions is the way the land lies in Linux.
Emacs has a long and revered history. The original program was written in 1976 as a set of macros for an existing text editor called TECO. Emacs originally was an acronym for Editor MACroS, unifying the many TECO command sets and key bindings. TECO is both a character-oriented text editor and an interpreted programming language for text manipulation.
Emacs has come a long way since 1976. It offers a robust Lisp interpreter that is hugely extensible and hackable. It brought to light lots of novel concepts such as an infinite clipboard, tree-based exploration of history, a reverse variable search, structural editing of code, and recursive editing that let you stop what you are doing, perform other edits, and then revert back to the original task.
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |
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