Making Microsoft Windows Home

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File: 1729693701093-0.jpg (188.62 KB, 1920x1200, win7-wallpaper-large.jpg)

File: 1729693701093-1.jpg (34.18 KB, 640x467, msmg toolkit majorgeeks3.jpg)

File: 1729693701093-2.png (2.84 MB, 3840x2160, 184027064-f5a6cec2-2865-4d….png)

Making Microsoft Windows Home Anonymous 23-10-24 14:28:23 No.26776

Am probably going to be switching to Windows (first time, other than public school computers), and QWERTY for work. This means giving up a whole load of my configuration, and sort of starting computing from scratch. Found a few interesting tools to make the operating system a little more usable:

- MSMG (https://msmgtoolkit.in/) to strip down the install to something a little more manageable.
- komorebi (https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi) to bring tiling windows managers to Microsoft Windows.
- shutup10++ (https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10) to disable much of the telemetry used by the system (if this isn't already removed by MSMG).
- AHK (https://www.autohotkey.com/) to make keyboard and mouse macros.

This is excluding typical packages with good reputation like Firefox, VLC, or FooBar2000. Just wondering what all you use to make Microsoft Windows a bit more like home.

Glownonymous 23-10-24 14:42:45 No.26779

Sounds bleak. Luckily most unix editors usually have windows, so contact with whatever IDE they mandate can be minimized. Why are you thinking of switching to qwerty though? There are layout converters even at the usb level. If you were to type a couple of lines at
a coworkers pc, i don't think typing speed would be something you had to worry about.

Anonymous 23-10-24 14:58:29 No.26780

File: 1729695509144.png (482.08 KB, 1800x1074, Screenshot 2024-10-23 at 1….png)

>>26779
>so contact with whatever IDE they mandate can be minimized.
It's probably going to be office work (judging by what am applying to), so PowerBI, Excel, etc. My programming skills aren't good enough to land a programming job, and would likely need to relocate to get one anyway.

>Why are you thinking of switching to qwerty though?
Just told myself "next time" wouldn't be going the pseudo-custom keymap route. Am on Mac half the time currently and it's just been a pain (randomly switching off etc). Even on Linux it took a while to figure out how to: making a custom symbols table for XKB etc. IIRC it was yet another process on OpenBSD.

Anonymous 23-10-24 15:03:51 No.26782

it depends. first of all I would check if visual studio (or whatever you are required to use) still supports windows 7. then I would check that the debloat scripts don't break those programs
imo as long as you are only doing work stuff on the machine you should optimize for performance rather than privacy

Anonymous 23-10-24 15:19:13 No.26784

>>26782
>still supports windows 7
Don't actually plan on running windows 7, just put that image up because it's one of the most memorable to me. That and XP.

>only doing work stuff on the machine
Was planning on switching everything. Just one laptop with a nice AMD CPU and 64GB of ram (a 16 fold improvement over any of my systems).

>then I would check that the debloat scripts don't break those programs
Huh, didn't really think of this for some reason. Would it be better to just use the LTSC version?

Anonymous 23-10-24 15:31:16 No.26785

>>26784
>Was planning on switching everything.
dual boot or windows only? with the former you can pretend the two systems are different machines

>LTSC version
sounds like a good idea, assuming everything else will still work

Anonymous 23-10-24 15:40:44 No.26786

>>26785
>dual boot or windows only? with the former you can pretend the two systems are different machines
Probably just windows only, will probably have two different logins though, one for work and one for personal. Guess in addition to needing to switch to Microsoft Windows for work, have no real reason to stay on Linux. The worst thing would be giving up my Emacs muscle memory, which is really the orthogonal question of whether to switch to QWERTY.

>sounds like a good idea
Okay cool. Now just need to make sure can get a pirated activation key.. (https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts seems to be standard issue)

Glownonymous 23-10-24 16:10:50 No.26787

>>26780
>It's probably going to be office work (judging by what am applying to), so PowerBI, Excel, etc.
Then you should definitely ask yourself what purpose you seek in your software environment. Custom keyboard layouts and macros can make your work more comfortable and maybe also make you more productive, but depending on your position it might be important to ensure you're not getting too much work done.

Anonymous 23-10-24 18:38:28 No.26791

>>26787
>depending on your position it might be important to ensure you're not getting too much work done.
Am not too concerned about skunkworking myself out of a job if that's the idea. You're right though that it doesn't make much sense to switch away to QWERTY since have already done so, even though truthfully, wouldn't do it again.

Anonymous 23-10-24 18:46:57 No.26792

>>26785
>LTSC
I second this. It's nice. Just be aware there's a small number of games that are somehow tightly intertwinted with the MS Store app that LTSC doesn't have by default.

I also use scoop as I feel it's the closest thing there is to an elegant Windows package manager. It installs apps to user dir just like Linniks and it avoids path pollution with shims. No problems so far and a lot faster than chocolatey ime.

Anonymous 24-10-24 14:30:53 No.26808

>>26792
>also use scoop
This is a good tip, thank you.

Anonymous 24-10-24 16:40:14 No.26812

>>26776
if you want to be like the third pic pls go back to arch
>rust
>anyhow
>jetbrains mono
>cli based system monitor
>neovim
>tiling windows manager

Anonymous 24-10-24 16:57:16 No.26813

File: 1729789035849.jpg (95.71 KB, 1280x720, 68747470733a2f2f73746f7265….jpg)

>>26812
Thought it was a bit amusing that komorebi, and glazewm were both written in Rust. Looks like FancyWM is .net instead, not sure if that's better. (Picture related, probably closer to how my machine would look but with Excel, PowerBI, Firefox, etc.) Might still be programming in GUI Emacs, if it actually works on Windows, it's super buggy on Mac OS.

Anonymous 24-10-24 16:58:44 No.26814

>>26812
Wonder if you can get lemon font for powershell, like on my main machine. haha.

Anonymous 24-10-24 17:09:27 No.26815

Another interesting tool in connection with autohotkey to get a more functional virtual desktop arrangement: https://github.com/MScholtes/VirtualDesktop

Anonymous 25-10-24 15:22:07 No.26841

>>26813
Anyone using GNU Emacs on Microsoft Windows, is it more than the "dog slow" constantly crashing mess that it is on Mac OS?

Glownonymous 25-10-24 16:36:21 No.26846

>>26841
don't know, but jwz apparently had a working XEmacs release on OSX https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/02/xemacs/
might be worth a try if you're not dependent on the elpa to hack the editor https://www.xemacs.org/Download/win32/

Anonymous 25-10-24 16:41:27 No.26847

>>26841
I used to use it for a while many years ago when I needed Windows for some university course. I don't remember it being that slow.

Anonymous 26-10-24 14:55:28 No.26888

>>26846
>jwz apparently had a working XEmacs release on OSX
Am not using ELPA on my Mac machine, but this sounds pretty terrible.

>>26847
>I don't remember it being that slow.
Good, thank you.

Anonymous 27-10-24 23:16:52 No.26910

>>26841
https://github.com/vim/vim-win32-installer/releases/download/v9.1.0/gvim_9.1.0_x86_signed.exe
You're welcome. :)

Anonymous 27-10-24 23:56:01 No.26911

>>26910
This gesture truly touched me, thank you.

Anonymous 12-11-24 12:28:32 No.27068

Thanks for this thread I recently installed Windows 11 after around 2 years on different Linux distros

Anonymous 12-11-24 22:53:10 No.27069

>>27068
Amusingly didn't get the job was after, and it turns out will be needing Linux for university, assuming decide to attend. Will be getting a new machine anyway.

Anonymous 13-11-24 17:00:40 No.27079

>>27069
If you can attend uni do it, you'll regret later not attending. Also why would you need Linux for uni? Why not Windows for most stuff and Linux on WSL 2.0 for what you need linux for?

Anonymous 13-11-24 17:48:11 No.27080

>>27079
>If you can attend uni do it, you'll regret later not attending.
It's grad-school, so less important, but you're probably right, registration is soon so should probably get things arranged today. In fact accepted the offer while writing this post.

>Also why would you need Linux for uni? Why not Windows for most stuff and Linux on WSL 2.0 for what you need linux for?
It seems like most of the courses, at minimum in the systems specialization required Linux, and it'd be a bit silly to use VMs for most day to day functioning unless am doing cross-platform or OS development work. Also have next to zero familiarity with windows. Might do it anyway because am stuck in a direction and it could be useful for business stuff. Haven't decided.

Did discover the LTSC IoT edition which can be illicitly activated more easily and has even fewer preinstalled, and uninstallable programs. Also discovered https://github.com/nir9/lightwm/tree/master for a DWM style tiling WM.

Anonymous 18-11-24 19:07:13 No.27156

>>27080
My new laptop finally arrived. No idea what to do. On the one hand for business applications, which do some of now, and might in the future, it's better. On the other hand am not used to it, and there is a requirement to run Linux for grad-school. Wouldn't know how to pick a distribution at this point either. Seems like there are multiple which are pretty good for software development (e.g. gentoo, nix, guix, etc.)

Glownonymous 18-11-24 19:24:56 No.27157

>>27156
If you know how to use a chroot to get software targeting "desktop linux" to work, pick your favorite distro that works on the hardware. Otherwise you should probably go with debian.

Anonymous 18-11-24 21:27:25 No.27159

>>27157
>desktop linux
hah, not familiar, think have run chroot before though… Now that think of it not sure even feel up to setting up a new PC at the moment…

Glownonymous 19-11-24 12:47:29 No.27163

>>27159
>>desktop linux
90% of proprietary software with a linux port only tests on ubuntu and often expects systemd, dbus, etc. to be present.
>there are multiple which are pretty good for software development (e.g. gentoo, nix, guix, etc.)
Good for software development doesn't mean le hacker distro. It means software you need for development is already pre-packaged, which is nearly always the case on debian.

Anonymous 19-11-24 16:59:20 No.27165

>>27163
>90% of proprietary software with a linux port only tests on ubuntu and often expects systemd, dbus, etc. to be present.
It's been awhile, last heard Ubuntu was due to be phased out for PopOS! due to the Canonical Amazon deal, or something of the like. Guess shouldn't be surprised about what you're saying anyway.

>It means software you need for development is already pre-packaged, which is nearly always the case on debian.
That's fair, and Devaun (as the distro still run on my non-Mac laptop) is most familiar to me.

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