Here are some recent improvements I made to my Emacs startup. The full file with these changes is on GitHub.

Disable toolbar and menu at the beginning

Since there can be a noticeable delay while Emacs processes the init file, especially if it is downloading packages, it’s better to customize the GUI as early as possible to avoid the window jumping around. I also made monokai-theme the first package I require after use-package, although I think this has limited utility.

Add these lines to the beginning of ~/.emacs.d/init.el:

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;; remove GUI stuff
(when (fboundp 'menu-bar-mode) (menu-bar-mode -1))
(when (fboundp 'tool-bar-mode) (tool-bar-mode -1))
(when (fboundp 'scroll-bar-mode) (scroll-bar-mode -1))

Don’t show GNU start screen

Get rid of the GNU splash/startup screen, and also remove the unnecessary message in the *scratch* buffer:

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;; show blank *scratch* buffer at start
(setq inhibit-startup-screen t)
(setq initial-scratch-message nil)

Disable bell

I can’t really express just how much I hate the bell. I disable it in Vim, I once even went so far as to unhook the internal PC speaker from the motherboard of one machine. It’s often suggested to (setq visual-bell t), but that makes Emacs flash the window which is almost as annoying. Here’s how to disable it entirely (from this StackOverflow answer):

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;; disable bell
(setq ring-bell-function 'ignore)