Where I can find the most popular Emacs settings?

Question

While it is fun to customize, the Emacs has 100s of mode and there is lots of customization. I like to find popular choices, so it makes my life easier and I can spend time productively. It could be about hooks, registers, buffers, keybindings,bookmarks etc..

If such a thing does not exist, I am still happy to customize in my way.

Answer 1

Have a look at the Emacs Prelude.

Answer 2

A very popular compilation of popular default settings is the Emacs Starter Kit, originally developed by Phil Hagelberg, then by Eric Schulte and finally updated for emacs-24. It mentions:

The main advantage of this Emacs Starter Kit are

• better default settings
• inclusion of many useful libraries and configurations
• "literate" customization embedded in Org-mode files
• an organizational directory structure
• git provides for version control, backup, and sharing

Then there are some specialized extensions of it:

• the starter kit for social sciences
• the emacs kicker
• the emacs expert kick

For most popular "aha" settings, the Emacs NiftyTricks page from the emacs wiki has already been linked to in another question.