Switching the default experience away from what people have grown used to over decades seems incredibly rude (despite what commercial software has normalized).

The magic of emacs is infinite customizability. And it's quite easy for users to find and start with emacs "distributions" or "starter packs". So that's probably the best route forward.

Potential improvements:

1 Base emacs continues to make it easier to try out a bunch of configurations and switch between them, obviating solutions like chemacs

2 There's a web repository of a a variety of starter packs with screenshots and reviews and installation instructions, to help beginners find everything in one place.

3 ...

Could be done with a flag tbh. One version to opt in. Next version it’s opt out.