Re: Emacs doesn't load .emacs

[Martin Jost]

"Hendrik Bilges" <VZQNVPETFXMY@spammotel.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
4quaviFops3pU3@individual.net">news:4quaviFops3pU3@individual.net...
> I have to correct myself. After installation there is no ~/.emacs yet. If
> I change an option in emacs and choose to save it, it is written. Fine so
> far. If I restart emacs and try to save options a second time, it shows me
> a message stating that it was invoked with -q option and that saving would
> override existing configuration.

There might also be a trivial explanation:
Further startup-code simply erased your output in the status line !
So have a look in the buffer "*Messages*". Probably, you find your output
there.
(I would consider any distribution, which breaks basic emacs featues (like
.emacs) by misfeatures in a site-start as seriously broken...)

If no, ...from the info file for emacs:
Your site may also have a "site startup file"; this is named
`site-start.el', if it exists.  Like `default.el', Emacs finds this
file via the standard search path for Lisp libraries.  Emacs loads this
library before it loads your init file.  To inhibit loading of this
library, use the option `-no-site-file'.

My comments on it:
So -no-site-file might be a try.
If you want to hunt down a site-start.el, You can use the command
"describe-variable" to get the value of the variable "load-path" (this is
the mentioned standard search path for Lisp libraries) You will get
somehting like this:

load-path's value is
(""/pd/emacs21.4/share/emacs/21.4/site-lisp"
"/pd/emacs21.4/share/emacs/site-lisp" "/pd/emacs21.4/share/emacs/21.4/leim"
"/pd/emacs21.4/share/emacs/21.4/lisp"
....

HTH - and keep trying, emacs definitely is worth it !

Martin