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I've noticed some people use this to disable the menu bar in the GUI:
(push '(menu-bar-lines . 0) default-frame-alist)
and some people use this:
(menu-bar-mode -1)
Both achieve the same. The first seems to append a list '(menu-bar-lines . 0) to the default-frame-alist variable.
I was wondering which approach is better to use. The first or the second one? or it doesn't matter.
push prepends, rather than appends. push should not be used in this context because it does not remove or replace an existing element of the default-frame-alist with the parameter menu-bar-lines. Type M-x find-function RET menu-bar-mode RET to see how menu-bar-mode works when activated and deactivated. Use (menu-bar-mode -1) to deactivate.
(push '(fullscreen . maximized) default-frame-alist) can the push be used in that situation?
early-init.el. I can set it with (set-frame-parameter nil 'fullscreen 'maximized) but I still don't know if it's the proper way of doing it.
nil in (set-frame-parameter nil 'fullscreen 'maximized) and I'm not sure if it's good or not. Even though it seems to me that all new frames are in full-screen which is what I want.
early-init-file at ~/.emacs.d/early-init.el and placed the following snippet at the top of the file: (message "%s | %s" (selected-frame) default-frame-alist). Then, I launched Emacs 28.2 and checked the *Messages* buffer and saw that the default-frame-alist has a nil value at this particular stage of the startup process. Because there is no pre-existing element containing the fullscreen parameter, I determined that it is now safe to use push. E.g., (push '(fullscreen . maximized) default-frame-alist). set-frame-parameter is used for a particular frame.
push is okay with menu-bar-lines as well when inside early-init.el. Right?
menu-bar-modeis safer precisely because it checks such things. And it may be the case that even if you push a duplicate (or conflicting) entry, nothing bad happens. The question is: how comfortable are you taking that risk - and that's a question only you can answer. What @lawlist's answer provides is a best practice: you can follow it - or not.