This isn't the more scientific package usage measurements found elsewhere
in this thread, but I asked on the Google+ Emacs community, and got a list
of the following packages people thought should be enabled by default:

cua-mode
cua-selection-mode
column-number-mode
delete-selection-mode
desktop-save-mode
dired-x
global-linnum-mode
global-subword-mode
ido-mode
icomplete-mode
iswitchb-mode
recentf-mode
savehist-mode
saveplace
show-paren-mode
size-indication-mode
uniquify
which-function-mode
winner-mode

There's more, but the rest are variable settings, keybindings and misc
functions that are useful. You can find all of it at
https://plus.google.com/+AndrewHyatt/posts/RTguQsNobjg (may not work
without javascript).



On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 11:09 PM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>wrote:

> > I did some manual filtering as a test and here are some of the top
> packages
> > which remained:
>
> > (ido . 137)
> > (uniquify . 136)
> > (imenu . 114)
> > (eldoc . 113)
> > (ispell . 107)
> > (flyspell . 91)
> > (recentf . 90)
> > (saveplace . 77)
> > (yasnippet . 75)
> > (windmove . 70)
> > (auto-complete . 66)
> > (delsel . 64)
> > (paredit . 49)
> > (iswitchb . 46)
> > (savehist . 43)
> > (linum . 38)
> > (icomplete . 34)
> > (winner . 34)
> > (hippie-exp . 32)
> > (ibuffer . 29)
> > ...
>
> Great, thanks.  `uniquify' is now enabled by default.
> `ido' is rather problematic because it's a very different interface with
> incompatible key-bindings and it is not a superset of the current
> default completion UI.
>
> > Ido is at the top (iswitchb is also here) and ido/isiwtchb would really
> > make a much better first impression for new users than the default
> > very barebone buffer switching.
>
> Iswitchb is marked obsolete in the trunk: you can get the same
> functionality with icomplete-mode.  So you can increase the count of
> `icomplete-mode' for all users who have enabled iswitchb without
> enabling icomplete-mode.
>
> The plan for "ido by default" is rather to slowly make ido obsolete by
> adding the corresponding functionality either in the default completion
> UI or in icomplete-mode.
> An alternative is to try and re-implement it on top of the current
> completion UI.  To a large extent, it boils down to the same.
>
> > Of course, this package measurement should be repeated with
> > representative data, but even with the data acquired from bug reports
> > it gives some ideas for packages which could be enabled by default.
>
> Indeed.  But I think it can be a good starting point for discussions
> about individual packages.
>
>
>         Stefan
>
>
>