For distraction free writing, M-x toggle-frame-fullscreen and (set-fringe-mode '(120 . 120)).
There used to be a bug in earlier emacs Versions requiring a Patch for proper fullscreen. Have not tried this for a while, but now it seems to work nice and smooth.
I like writeroom-mode[1] for distraction free writing. I only use emacs in a terminal that's always fullscreen, but I imagine it works just fine in any case.