Emacs - Ubuntu initialization

Question

Odd behavior loading emacs on ubuntu, there seems to be some initialization that goes on that is not in the .emacs nor in any of the files emacs reports loading through \"emacs

Answer 1

The sequence of the Emacs initialization is the following (at least, for Emacs 22):

1. Load the file debian-startup (.el or .elc) found in load-path (usually, /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/debian-startup.el or /usr/share/emacs22/site-lisp/debian-startup.elc) and call the function debian-startup defined in this file. This function loads all files in /etc/emacs/site-start.d/ and /etc/emacs22/site-start.d/.
2. Load site-start (.el or .elc) found in load-path.
3. Load your init file .emacs, .emacs.el or ~/.emacs.d/init.el.
4. Load a default init file default.el or default.elc.

I also suggest you reading the section "Emacs startup strategy" in /usr/share/doc/emacsen-common/debian-emacs-policy.gz for more Ubuntu/Debian specific information. To find the reason of odd behavior you can start emacs with the argument --no-site-file and load these init files one by one until you find a file that causes this behavior.