I want to hide the welcome screen.
My .emacs file:
(setq c-basic-offset 4) ; indents 4 chars
(setq tab-width 4) ; and 4 char wi
(setq inhibit-splash-screen t)
(setq inhibit-startup-message t)
Alternatively you could:
alias emacs='emacs --no-splash'
In my .emacs I have (setq inhibit-startup-message t) and that works for me.
The gnu emacs manual says inhibit-startup-message is the old version and inhibit-splash-screen is the newer version. I don't know in which version that changed. http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Initial-Options.html
In Emacs 24, inhibit-splash-screen and inhibit-startup-message are alias for inhibit-startup-screen, so simply add (setq inhibit-startup-screen t) to your .emacs file will solve the problem.
Given that configuration, your startup buffer is now *scratch*, if you want to further change the default buffer, M-h v initial-buffer-choice <RET> will help.
Official document: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Startup-Summary.html
You can easily do it through emac's menus...
Options -> customize emacs -> top-level customization group
then select environment group, then initialization, and set inhibit startup screen to on.
Add the following to your $HOME/.emacs:
(setq inhibit-startup-screen t)
The next time you start Emacs, the welcome screen shouldn't appear. If you already have Emacs open with the welcome screen, you can kill it with C-x k (Control-x, then k).
You can use set initial-scratch-message variable to nil to hide the initial message or set anything you want to display your message.
(setq initial-scratch-message nil)
or
(setq initial-scratch-message ";; Happy Hacking")
Hope it helped.