Emacs Elements has another useful video on a minimal configuration for vanilla Emacs. This is mainly for the new user, of course, but I was struck by how closely it matched my basic configuration. My current init.el is about 2,500 lines so there’s obviously a lot more there but I think the video captures what a new user needs to get started with Emacs.
The video starts out by getting rid of all the annoying things that everyone wants gone. That includes the startup screen, the tool bar, and the menu. I’d add the scroll bar to that but others may disagree. Note that deleting the menu bar on macOS can be problematic and you may want to omit that change if you’re on macOS.
Next up is configuring the package system. Part of that was arranging to include the use-package package. Fortunately, after Emacs 29 that will no longer be necessary because it will be included automatically. The other part of package configuration that everyone will want to include is adding MELPA as one of the package repositories. That will never be included out-of-the-box because of ideological reasons so it’s needs to be done manually. Most of the useful packages are available only there so including it is pretty much mandatory no matter what the true believers tell you.
The video includes some other useful configurations so you should definitely take a look if you’re interested in a minimal Emacs configuration. The video is only 8 minutes, 36 seconds so it should be easy to fit it in