Question

I’ve placed the dired plus file in ~/.emacs.d, added (require 'dired+) to my ~/.emacs file and restarted Emacs. How do I launch dired plus?

Answer 1

Dired+ adds functionality to dired, so you don’t launch Dired+ as such – just run dired as you would normally (e.g. M-x dired) and the added functionality should be available.

If Dired+ isn’t loading, make sure that ~/.emacs.d is in your load-path – add this line to your init file if necessary:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d")

Edit: As event_jr says, you should avoid adding .emacs.d to your load-path – create a new directory in ~/.emacs.d, install your Emacs Lisp files there, and add that directory to load-path. My answer was intended to fix your immediate problem, given where you’d installed the Dired+ file, not a recommendation to install packages in ~/.emacs.d.