Re: Emacs doesn't load .emacs

[Robert Thorpe]

Hendrik Bilges wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just started to use emacs. I'm using it on ubuntu. I created a .emacs
> file in ~/, but Emacs won't load it. Just for checking I put this text
> into the file:
>
> (display-time)
>
> If I load the file manually after startup, the time is displayed in the
> status bar, but not before. I already checked if Emacs knows HOME, there
> is no problem with that.

That's a very odd problem.

Five possibilities:-
* Somewhere else in the .emacs file you have a misplaced paren or
comment opener causing (display-time) not be evaluated
* The filename of the file you've created is not quite ".emacs",
perhaps the "." is in a strange character set
* Ubuntu does something strange like renaming what .emacs should be
called (SUSE used to do this)
* The emacs you have is very broken
* The linux distro you have is very broken