I have been using emacs as my editor of choice for many years now, there has been times when i have wanted to replace it - but i just can't seem to go away.

This is, of course, mostly due to the key-bindings used in emacs, once you get used to it you will be hard pressed to use anything else.

At this point i think i have just accepted that emacs will be with me for the next many years.

I am no emacs guru but over the years i have acumulated some emacs-lisp that customise emacs to my tastes. Use it if you want to.

Since i am now developing on both Linux and Windows, and since i prefer to use the same .emacs file for both platforms my .emacs contains a bit of code to handle that.

Besides the .emacs file you should also download the extensions i use and put them in ~/.emacs.d - although an emacs newer than mine might come with the extensions built-in. Emacs will use it's own version if that is available.