Emacs21 settings in Debian ?

[Vignoble101]

Good morning all.

I started my Linux adventure a couple of years ago with a Mandrake 
distro. It was providing a version of Emacs - I wouldn't be able to tell 
you which one - which was just doing quite well !

I spent a whole summer experiencing Java coding using that very nice and 
efficient tool this newsgroup is dedicated to. Probably some would argue 
that there is nothing such as a real Java IDE, but I never could get 
along well with the idea that I need to purchase a brand new computer 
with gigs of memory and megahertz for the sake of typing nice 
anti-aliased characters that will never fit to my screen among all those 
toolbars, icons and funky starving-for-pixels GUIs.
As Vi sounded a bit raw to me, I went for Emacs.
The tutorial was perfect, but too short. So I bought myself an O'Reilly 
book on that subject. Everything was crystal clear and Emacs was 
responding perfectly to any command.

So, as my Linux adventure was going on, I was lead to try different 
distros (mainly Redhat & Fedora), got hacked in and messed up, and had 
to leave my coding activity apart for getting a little bit more involved 
into that networking and admin stuff.

Anyways... now my choice is made and I stick to Debian :)
Now here comes the pain. In its Debian pre-compiled version, Emacs21 
does not display colors. The keystrokes sound different that what I was 
used to. For instance, copying a block with C-space and M-w does not 
work. So I have to use C-space / C-w , yank back, and yank again at the 
place I want to paste. A bit annoying...
I will not make a long list of all my observations, but I must say that 
I'm pretty confused.

So far I have not been very involved in my research to solve this.
I've googled around to see if there was a way to get the color back. All 
I could find was how to change the existing color settings...
So I've tryed to re-install my Emacs21 from the source and could not 
even get it to start !

So basically, I'm into big trouble. I don't no if the keystrokes pain in 
the ass comes along with the new flavour...?
I must admit I don't really want to get involved into elisp hacking, but 
maybe I should give a try on how to configure Emacs properly before 
compiling the sources.

Anyway guys, any help or suggestion is more than welcome, as I would 
like to get back to the scene and make the most of my proud console !

GNU rules !!

Vince.