Emacs notes

I'm not a huge fan of emacs having grown up on Macs, but I do occassionally really want to use it when sshing into a Unix box.
The best cheatsheet I've found is here.

Standard cut-copy-paste

Turning on CUA mode makes the cut-copy-paste controls a lot more intuitive to an Emacs non-guru. You can do this by pressing Alt-x then typing cua-mode, and hitting return, or by adding the line (cua-mode t) to your .emacs file (or by making a .emacs file with this line in in your home directory if you don't yet have one). You can then use Control-X,C,V for cut-copy-paste like you expect, as well as being able to use Shift with the arrow keys to select text. Note that you still have to hit Control-Space to start selecting stuff in the first place.

Essential commands

C here means Control.
C-x C-sSave current buffer.
C-x C-f Open file.
C-x C-w Save as.
C-x b Change buffer
C-x C-c Quit
C-x g Cancel current command