
Emacs Prelude 1.0 - tosh
https://emacsredux.com/blog/2020/09/15/emacs-prelude-1-0/
======
nathell
I don't use Prelude, preferring instead to build up my own minimal config, but
other Emacs packages by Bozhidar – CIDER and Projectile – are my daily
drivers.

When it dawned on me how much I rely on these tools generously provided to me
at no cost, and how much value they bring, I finally bit the bullet and
started sponsoring @bbatsov on Github Sponsors.

If you're in the same position, be it with Prelude, CIDER, Projectile, or
Rubocop, please do the same!

In general, if you have some other free/open-source packages that you rely on
in your work, I urge you to contribute financially to their development.
Software needs manpower to thrive, and manpower needs financial support to be
sustainable.

(Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with these packages in any way, other than
being a happy user.)

~~~
michaelanckaert
PSA to all Open Source maintainers: offer a version of your software for sale!

In many cases I work on projects that use an open source package where
donations are the only means of support (if possible at all). I could never
get a client to 'donate' €500 but I can easily approve €1000 for software
support or licensing.

~~~
gfxgirl
No thank you. My open source software is a hobby I spend time on when I feel
like it. The moment I start asking for money and selling it it's no longer a
fun hobby but instead a burden on my time as I'll now feel obligated provide
support since people gave me money.

~~~
devin
This is wise. I've known people who have accepted donations that wound up very
much regretting it later for more or less exactly the reason you mention.

------
natex
Prelude is an Emacs distribution that aims to enhance the default Emacs
experience. Prelude alters a lot of the default settings, bundles a plethora
of additional packages and adds its own core library to the mix. The final
product offers an easy to use Emacs configuration for Emacs newcomers and lots
of additional power for Emacs power users.

source:
[https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/](https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/)

------
immigrantsheep
Why are so many projects allergic to screenshots? You put so much work into
something and you write a really good readme but then not a single image after
stating 'Improved UX, that's still in line with Emacs traditions'.

~~~
pivo
I haven't used prelude so I don't know, but as an Emacs user the points
described here
[https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/](https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/)
would not suggest to me that they're something that can be represented well
with screenshots. UX is user experience, which with Emacs is not necessarily
visual.

~~~
oblio
They could just record the screen
([https://obsproject.com](https://obsproject.com)) / terminal
([https://asciinema.org/](https://asciinema.org/)).

------
sheaton
Easily the best Emacs config I've used. Tried some of the "big" ones at
various times like Spacemacs, Doom, etc., but they're massive and Vim-centric.
Wrote my own large config I had been using for the past year or two. Recently
tried Prelude as it was recommended by some co-workers, and found that it did
all the significant things my own config did with much better performance.
Included my daily necessities (helm, swipe, which-key, magit, clojure stuff)
and more out of the box. Just get rid of the scroll bars if you're not on Mac
and good to go. IMO, a great representation of what Emacs should be "out of
the box".

~~~
bozhidar
Thanks for the kind words! Much appreciated!

~~~
sheaton
Thank you for your work, and I would encourage people to sponsor Bozhidar's
work on this and other open-source software many rely on through GitHub
[https://github.com/sponsors/bbatsov](https://github.com/sponsors/bbatsov)

------
cmrdporcupine
Reading through the description of the project I see what its aims are but I
don't see a list of specifics of what it changes from baseline emacs.

As a long-time emacs user (dear god, it's been 28 years?!), I'd like a more
concrete description before considering trying it. Exactly which curated third
party packages and UX? Or at least list the major ones.

Otherwise, nice effort. IMHO baseline distrib of emacs has made some odd
choices that I think put some people off who might have given it a try.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Prelude includes and sets up the automatic activation of helm, projectile,
ido, magit, and a fairly standard set of modules for languages like ruby,
python, c, rust, js, css, html, xml, shell, scheme, (haskell, latex, erlang...
etc etc)

If you have these set up already, and like the way you have them set up, don't
switch. Instead, consider whether you'd benefit from crux, which is where they
moved all the formerly unique-to-Prelude stuff:

[https://github.com/bbatsov/crux](https://github.com/bbatsov/crux)

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Thanks. I've been wondering if I should invest the time to learn magit. It
looks compelling, but deep and complicated.

~~~
narwally
There's surprising little time you need to invest before magit starts paying
back by decreasing the time you would have previously spent looking at the git
documentation for the operations you don't use very often.

~~~
trey-jones
Agreed. magit is one of the best pieces of software that I've encountered.
Well-deserving of the "porcelain" moniker. Very intuitive, and you can always
fall back to CLI if you need to.

------
smabie
Prelude is a really great distribution that packages a lot of high quality
packages but doesn't completely change the Emacs experience like Spacemacs
does. It's also relatively lightweight and small.

If someone wants a great starting point for an Emacs config, I'd recommend
Prelude.

------
mcbuilder
I currently use Doom, but actually started out rolling my own config based
around Evil, ended up close to 400 lines (though that's small compared to
some). IMO better to start with as close to vanilla as possible so you get
used to learning elisp. Doom is just so high quality and what I want that I
take the shortcut and just use it. However, you still might want to do a lot
of customization, and I think you'd be pretty lost as a new user. A sensible
prelude is a great place to start.

------
willeh
I'm a long time user of Prelude myself and it is absolutely terrific. I like
my Emacs to be well Emacs and prelude as opposed to many other configs fits
that description perfectly. A huge thanks to bbatsov for saving countless
hours of configuring.

~~~
cwxm
Have it tried Doom Emacs? If so, what do you prefer about Prelude over the
former?

~~~
zeveb
He did say that he prefers Emacs to be Emacs; Doom Emacs is more of a vim-in-
Emacs, isn't it? That's probably a very good thing (were I starting out, I
would probably use Doom or at least Evil mode), but for those of us used to
the Emacs bindings it is a chore to switch now.

~~~
pantulis
Well in my case I prefer prelude because it seems like what it really is: a
curated set of Emacs settings and configurations.

Doom or Spacemacs really transmogrify Emacs into VSCode or whatnot -- I feel
like I'm losing control of my Emacs config as they have layers and layers of
elisp.

------
mrbonner
I’m a Vi user for over 20 years now. Though, I only know the very basic of Vi
to edit config files. I have tried several times to use Vi for as a general
editor for programming (with plugins) but didn’t feel intuitive with it. I
guess the obscured key shortcuts are putting me off. For some reason, I got
hooked to emacs after using CiDER for Clojure. I feel like the shortcuts
problem in emacs is just a facade as everything is bound to a function! What a
revelation it is. I would give prelude a try because it doesn’t try to force
push Vi mode in emacs.

~~~
alpaca128
To be fair inputs in Vim can also be bound to a function call. In large parts
it's just a different scripting language. After trying both for a while I'd
say Emacs and Vim mainly have more very different approaches to the same
goals. I never really loved Emacs but I do appreciate its better scripting
language(imho) and more robust syntax highlighting.

~~~
jhoechtl
Wait for Neovim tree-sitter powered syntax highlighting!

------
reddit_clone
Happy user here.

I used to have a large messy emacs config.Not anymore.

Not a full distribution like Spacemacs or Doom. Just vanilla emacs with
everything I need!

~~~
bloopernova
I don't know much about Prelude, how many lines does your ~/.emacs have?
(don't worry about excluding whitespace)

My vanilla .emacs only has 321, but I'm mostly just using org-mode and org-
roam with a couple of extras.

------
MayeulC
Tangential question, but what has happened to the guile conversion? Is it
something that the Emacs project aims to upstream?

There's some info on
[https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs)
but no definitive, recent "current state" section.

------
chriswarbo
Prelude helped me start using Emacs around 8 or 9 years ago; it certainly got
me up to speed and productive (once I disabled guru-mode ;) )

My .emacs.d is still technically a fork of Prelude, but I've gradually been
replacing parts with use-package, since that seems like a more lightweight,
generic, declarative, modular approach to Emacs config these days.

~~~
onetom
it sounded like you're are actually describing this package manager:
[https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el](https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el)

------
tshanmu
This made getting started with emacs so easy for me, long ago now! Thanks and
congratulations!!

------
lgunsch
Prelude is what really got me into Emacs. It was a just barely decent
experience using Emacs, but once I got prelude it really opened up Emacs up
for me. It sets you up a lot better for success.

------
bzg
Congratulations!

~~~
bozhidar
Thanks!

------
planetmcd
I love Prelude and have been using it for several years. Thanks for all you
do!

~~~
bozhidar
You're welcome!

------
mikorym
> [it doesn't enable] evil-mode (vim keybindings) by default

Is it easy or in any way advisable or otherwise a good idea to use Emacs with
Vim keybindings---coming from a Vim background?

~~~
rednerrus
Just bite the bullet, take the month it will take to get used to Emacs and
jump in.

~~~
mikorym
Sorry to ask for a clarification, but do you mean with or without Vim
keybindings?

~~~
rednerrus
Without.

