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I've seen quite a few starter packages for Emacs (Starter kit, Prelude, etc), but all of them I'm aware of use lots of third-party packages downloaded from the various package repositories, such as GNU, MELPA, Marmalade, ... I'm about to start using Emacs on a closed network - really closed - as in, no connectivity to the internet whatsoever. If I'm to use any third-party packages, I'll have to have IT review the packages, which takes forever. Too many requests for review will just result in wholesale rejection of all of it.

So I'd like to know: are there any similar setups out there that use packages included in Emacs to begin with? (I'm using Emacs 24.5) I can get away with a little bit of keyboarding stuff in, and maybe three or four third-party packages, but that's about it. This has to run on Windows 7.

EDIT: I should have mentioned that I will be writing Python code on this system. I've been using flycheck on my internet-connected machine, but I'll be using flymake on the stand-alone network machine. Flymake is apparently more difficult to set up, but not that much more difficult. This kind of thing is what I was going for in the original question: everything else being equal, I'd rather use flycheck, but things aren't equal, and I'd like to know how to set up flymake. Another example: I've been using auto-complete - I love the tooltip-like presentation of possible completions - but I should probably try to stick with built-in stuff like dabbrev, pcomplete, and so on. Not trade-offs I'd like to make, but there it is.

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  • Reiterating from my answer: I think you would be best to split your question in two. The question of "good defaults" is really unrelated to the question of "three or four 3rd-party packages that are right for me", and I think mixing them will make the answers messy. – phils Nov 21 '15 at 1:19
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    Responding to your comment on my original answer ('If an Emacs "starter kit" was nothing more than a list of packages to download, we could just list off the packages and be done with it, couldn't we? No need for a "starter kit."'), I'd say that starter kits would often be as much about configuration of packages as simply providing them; but if you're only picking a handful, then that's maybe less of a concern -- you might not be able to download packages later, but you can (presumably) tweak your configuration of them at any time. – phils Nov 21 '15 at 1:29
  • GNU Emacs does not provide any "starter kits", unless you want to consider GNU Emacs itself, out of the box, to be a starter kit. This means that a starter kit is, itself, a third-party library. That's all it is - someone's idea of something that might help you get started, realized as that someone's library. – Drew Nov 21 '15 at 2:48
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are there any similar setups out there that use packages included in Emacs to begin with?

Are you asking about configurations which enable functionality which is available-but-disabled by default? i.e. Things which are generally considered to be better, but are not the traditional behaviour, and which have consequently been made opt-in features. e.g. C-x C-b still calls list-buffers, but the vastly superior ibuffer has been built-in for years.

That's a really good question. Most people will configure default functionality in their own configs of course, but I don't know if anyone provides a "better defaults" (only) config online.

I think you would be best to split your question in two. The question of "good defaults" is really unrelated to the question of "three or four 3rd-party packages that are right for me", and I think mixing them will make the answers messy (the former has a pretty well-defined scope, while the latter does not).

Regarding 3rd-party packages, I'm really doubtful that you'll find any "starter kit" which limits itself so severely -- as you've observed, they tend to add a rather large number of packages, to save the users from finding them by themselves; because there's a lot of stuff out there -- so it sounds like you just want GNU Emacs, a bunch of "better default" elisp, and to then install the "three or four" packages that you want to have. (I don't know what those packages are, but I doubt it makes sense to expect someone to have prepared it in advance for you, given your constraints.)

If you have no idea what those packages are either, then I'm not sure how to help you, other than to suggest that you spend a bunch of time investigating what is out there so that you can work out which packages should make your (very very) short list.

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  • n.b. I've deleted my original answer because I had misunderstood part of the question. Please feel free to repeat the down-votes if you still don't like this version. – phils Nov 21 '15 at 1:16
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    Regarding your new answer: fair enough. I should have said that I would be developing Python code, and mentioned some things that I like on my internet-connected machine. – Rodney Price Nov 21 '15 at 2:42

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