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Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

441 points by fomine3 6y ago

abdusco 6y ago
I'd add Directory Opus[0] to that list. It's an incredibly customizable and scriptable file explorer that allows you to fit it exactly to your workflow. It's like IntelliJ of file explorers. - Tabbed interface with multiple panes - Every function can be assigned a shortcut - Every button can be scripted - Defaults can be overwritten - Dynamic layouts based on folder contents, path or determined by a script - Custom file previews, context menus, rename scripts - Hooks for reacting to different events - Every corner of the UI is themable - Virtual filesystem for archiving and bookkeeping - ... One disadvantage is that you have to use an ancient version of JScript (ES3 / Microsoft flavor) or VBScript (possibly because of the need for communicating over a COM interface). Or use its own DSL for simpler scripts. I wish it had support for a more modern / more popular languages for scripting. I wonder if QuickJS[1] can be integrated into it. Or Python. That would be really sweet. [0]: https://www.gpsoft.com.au/ https://www.gpsoft.com.au/ [1]: https://bellard.org/quickjs/ https://bellard.org/quickjs/
- Osiris 6y ago
  Another robust file explorer is xplorer2.
- immigrantsheep 6y ago
  I've been a dopus user since the Amiga days. Love it
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  It's probably using the Active Scripting interfaces for scripts. I seem to remember that Python supports those interfaces so that might be an option.
- yread 6y ago
  Or TotalCommander. Directory synchronization, integrated diff, Sftp support, renaming multiple files, lister to intelligently view contents of a file, 10s of years of plugins
- rkagerer 6y ago
  I tried Directory Opus today. Is there any way I can make the menu bar about half the height?
  - abdusco 6y ago
    Some components are Win32 primitives, and it may not be possible to modify them. You could try asking it in the forum[0]? Lead developer is quite responsive. https://resource.dopus.com/ https://resource.dopus.com/
    - rkagerer 6y ago
      Thanks. It is actually possible to reduce the height of standard Windows menu bars via system metrics. These look somewhat non-standard and don't respect that.
fomine3 6y ago
I'll replace WinDirStat with WizTree. It loads immediately because of reading local disk MFT.
- dspillett 6y ago
  I tend to use WizTree for local NTFS volumes where it's MFT analysis benefit is present, it can be so much faster it almost seems like magic. For everything else on Windows (network mounts, fat/exfat) I currently use Space Sniffer (http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/ http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/) One thing issue with WizTree is that drawing the result is slow for large trees (a volume with a great many files spread over a the structure) compared to other programs. For one of my local volume at work which happens to include an archive copy of a huge (for VSS) source safe repository WizTree is slower despite the MFT shenanigans because drawing the result after takes enough time to undo the advantage. Though this is on SSD - I expect WizTree would reclaim the speed crown for this dataset on a "traditional" disk, where the reduced random access IO requirements of its MFT scan will be even more significant.
  - Tempest1981 6y ago
    How slow are you experiencing? For me, I think it rarely takes more than 2 or 3 seconds for the entire drive. Great program, free, but I donated.
    - dspillett 6y ago
      > How slow are you experiencing? Having retested not I have local access to that filesystem again, the issue seems to be when used remote via RDC, even over a local wifi network. Running properly local the delay goes away in even the pathological case. As SpaceSniffer has no similar bad slow-down on display updates, I assume that means how WizTree draws interacts badly with the remoting protocol: either it is drawing in small steps and RDC is trying to send each update out individually so many small updates are going over the wire, or the 3D-ish look is causing issues, or both.
- Osiris 6y ago
Jamie9912 6y ago
I would add ClipX (https://bluemars.org/clipx/ https://bluemars.org/clipx/) to that list, its extremely handy to bring up a small window of my past clipboards with a hotkey. It's also extremely lightweight
- JohnCoden 6y ago
  I use CLCL (https://nakka.com/soft/clcl/index_eng.html https://nakka.com/soft/clcl/index_eng.html) which looks quite similar.
- Jasonnor 6y ago
  I think clipboard history (Win + V) in Win10 is completely enough to replace ClipX.
  - Jamie9912 6y ago
    I don't like the whole Cloud sync thign
fomine3 6y ago
Seeing diff from 2014 is interesting. Maybe this year's list is a bit reduced version. Also MS' apps replaced some 3rd party apps. Example: Chocolatey -> WinGet, GOW -> WSL, F.lux -> removed (maybe alt: Win10 supports night mode), Notepad2/Sublime -> VSCode
jhvkjhk 6y ago
I wonder why the author recommend winget but not scoop. Scoop obviously has more community support and that's the most important part of a package manager (more packages, more frequent update, etc).
- runjake 6y ago
  Winget is the de facto official package manager for Windows. It is or will be included with Windows. I know it’s included in the Insider builds.
  - timvisee 6y ago
    It is a mess though, and quite incapable.
    - mark_and_sweep 6y ago
      Agreed. winget is lacking most features I absolutely need from a package manager, including listing installed packages, uninstalling packages, and updating packages. These are all on the v1 roadmap [1], but for the foreseeable future I'm sticking with scoop. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/blob/master/doc/windows-package-manager-v1-roadmap.md https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/blob/master/doc/wind...
  - cm2187 6y ago
    But what package list does it have? That’s the primary criteria. A package manager with no package isn’t of much use.
    - easton 6y ago
      https://github.com/Microsoft/winget-pkgs https://github.com/Microsoft/winget-pkgs Pretty much everything major with a installer is covered.
- kekebo 6y ago
  Any upsides to scoop compared to chocolatey?
grayhat 6y ago
I'd add Far Manager, which has been THE file manager for more than 15 years for me on Windows. BSD license: https://www.farmanager.com/download.php?l=en https://www.farmanager.com/download.php?l=en I wish it was ported to Linux and I'd probably never use midnight commander again
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- iaml 6y ago
  https://github.com/elfmz/far2l/ https://github.com/elfmz/far2l/
mrweasel 6y ago
Sort of a side note: Exceptional Mac programs are often showcased and awarded. Either by Apple or others in the Mac “community”. Is there example from the Windows side? Programs that highlight the very best the Windows platform can deliver?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- phendrenad2 6y ago
  I think that there are simply too many to spotlight.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    I think that Microsoft just don't care.
    - mrweasel 6y ago
      That’s sort of my take as well. I can’t think of a single Windows program that would wish was available to me on the Mac or Linux. You never hear a company advertising that their product is only feasable thanks to the features provided in the .Net framework, or that their application takes advantage of the foundation provided by Windows. I not saying that Windows is bad, it’s a truck, meant for business, and games. It’s just that there aren’t any overwhelming programs which could only exist on Windows. Many programs don’t even feel completly native to the platform, and basic features like drag’n drop, copy’n paste or shortcut are frequently a little hit and miss, it have become much better, but still, it’s a little late. Visual Code is a fantastic product, but it’s not really a Windows application. That sort of tells me that not ever Microsoft really believe that Windows have that much to offer on the desktop, that you can’t just replace it with web technologies.
      - wayneftw 6y ago
        TLDR; My main question for you - What kinds of programs do you think could only exist on a Mac or Linux which could not possibly work on Windows? > You never hear a company advertising that their product is only feasable thanks to the features provided in the .Net framework... Yes you do. There are whole companies (and publications) that only exist thanks to the .NET framework and before that, Visual Basic. How many "Swift/Obj-C component companies" are there? On the .NET side I can count at least 2 big ones off the top of my head (DevExpress and Telerik), but I'm probably forgetting dozens more from decades past. If these companies and their customers were already being served by Java or Obj-C then .NET would never have taken off. Outside of the .NET components business, there is a whole class of applications which would be extremely difficult to develop and maintain on Mac and Linux. Programs like TortoiseGit which heavily customize the Windows Explorer and other bits of the Windows UI in ways which Apple would never provide APIs for. On Linux, to develop apps like these you'd have cover to much of the fragmented landscape of desktop environments. I still miss TortoiseGit on my Linux desktop. AutoHotKey is also in another class of apps that I can't see existing for Mac or Linux. Automating Win32 is easy because you can hook into everything and there's a stable, unfragmented landscape. Here's something I recently did with AutoHotKey - created a 2 line script that waited for a "HID key/Special key/Media key" to be pressed and ran a program. On a Mac you'll be writing a whole custom program or hunting down an obscure utility. On Linux, you'll cobble together a few different programs depending on your DE setup. On my Mac, I had trouble even finding a program [0] that would show me what keyboard keys were pressed so I could use the key id in my script, like this - https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/KeyList.htm#SpecialKeys https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/KeyList.htm#SpecialKeys > I not saying that Windows is bad, it’s a truck, meant for business, and games. It's a general purpose OS, just like Mac and Linux. If Windows is a truck, all three of them are trucks. > It’s just that there aren’t any overwhelming programs which could only exist on Windows. What kinds of programs do you think could only exist on a Mac or Linux which could not possibly work on Windows? > Many programs don’t even feel completly native to the platform, and basic features like drag’n drop, copy’n paste or shortcut are frequently a little hit and miss, it have become much better, but still, it’s a little late. Not sure specifically what you're talking about here. But - a little late for what? The vast majority of desktop users and more than half of all programmers are already on Windows. I've never had problems with basic features like cut/copy/paste or window management on Windows. On my Mac I've given up on trying to fix the lack of window management features and the inability to do things with keyboard like "pressing just delete to delete a file". On my main workstations I had to cobble together various scripts and obscure utilities to do things Windows does, such as "use this hotkey to move window to other monitor" (for XFCE). > Visual Code is a fantastic product... It's called Visual Studio Code or VS Code. > ...it’s not really a Windows application. That sort of tells me that not ever Microsoft really believe that Windows have that much to offer on the desktop... Nah, they built VS Code as part of their expansion into cloud services so they could market those services to Mac and Linux programmers more easily. Electron is just the path of least resistance for building cross-platform apps. They couldn't use Windows-only tech to build it because of course Windows-only tech is a bad way to build cross-platform apps. [0] - Just found this today, but note the comment on the second answer that "it doesn't work for media keys" which was my problem. Also, the first answer doesn't show you key codes just highlights the key being pressed. - https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/40192/how-can-i-tell-exactly-what-keys-are-being-pressed-on-the-mac/40199 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/40192/how-can-i-te... [1] - Not sure what Core ML can do that ML.NET cannot but here's an article highlighting a company using ML.NET - https://sigparser.com/developers/email-parsing/sentiment-analysis/ https://sigparser.com/developers/email-parsing/sentiment-ana... [2] More here - https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/machinelearning-ai/ml-dotnet/customers https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/machinelearning-ai/ml-dotn...
rkagerer 6y ago
What do folks think of the recommended WinMerge and Perforce Visual Merge, over Beyond Compare? I've been using Beyond Compare for years and have yet to see anything I like better. Total Uninstall should also be on this list, to keep your machine clean if you're like me and try out dozens or hundreds of different software titles per year. SysInternals belongs up there with NirSoft. I used Teracopy for a while but found it buggy on occasion and worried about forgetting what I had queued. If it's gotten better I might give it another whirl. I've got a slew of great utilities I've collected over the years which I find indispensible on Windows. There's a lot of overlap with Scott's, but I think he's missing some gems. Could share my own list if anyone is interested.
- abdusco 6y ago
  In the same field as Total Uninstall, there's Bulk Crap Uninstaller[0] that helps you stay sane when fixing up a relative's computer. It finds and helps you uninstall applications unattended, also removes leftover files after the uninstallation. [0]: https://github.com/Klocman/Bulk-Crap-Uninstaller https://github.com/Klocman/Bulk-Crap-Uninstaller
- jimbob45 6y ago
  Shout-out to TortoiseDiff over WinMerge/BC3. I routinely get my best results with it because of its superior usability (and it’s free!).
  - GordonS 6y ago
    Is TortoiseDiff available standalone, or does it only come with/as part of TortoiseSVN?
    - jimbob45 6y ago
      I’m sure you can get it alone somehow. The whole package is useful though, whether through TortoiseSVN or TortoiseGit.
- tailspin2019 6y ago
Ayesh 6y ago
Compared to Windows Terminal, I started to use Fluent Terminal (also on Microsoft store), and it is amazing! It crashed a few times at first, but it's customizable, has a settings UI, and is just as fast and nicer looking compared to Windows Terminal. X-Mouse button control is another app I absolutely love. It replaced my Logitech Options, and works quite nice, and quietly sits doing just that.
- Tempest1981 6y ago
  Windows Terminal allows some customization, via the settings Jason file. Colors, watermark image. I think they're working on a GUI for settings. That said, the rate of fixes seems to have slowed.
- kekebo 6y ago
  It seems nice but using WSL(2) Windows Terminal is noticeably faster for me, same compared to most other alternatives including Cmder/ConEmu. While Windows Terminal doesn't have a settings UI (yet[0]) it does allow for theming, this page[1] features a range of color schemes that you can define and set in your settings.json. There's also a wrapper that allows for quake style drop down [2] until it's implemented by Windows Terminal itself[0]. [0] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/main/doc/terminal-v2-roadmap.md#20-scenarios https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/main/doc/terminal... [1] https://windowsterminalthemes.dev/ https://windowsterminalthemes.dev/ [2] https://github.com/flyingpie/windows-terminal-quake https://github.com/flyingpie/windows-terminal-quake
- turing_complete 6y ago
  The year is 2020 and people think a terminal that crashes a few times is "amazing". That is amazing.
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Terminals are thirty years behind on Windows but catching up fast. I blame Balmer and his ilk.
idiocrat 6y ago
I like dnGrep. It searches inside archives, Excel files and other MS Office documents. Supports replace. [0]: http://dngrep.github.io/ http://dngrep.github.io/
- t00r 6y ago
  Using dnGrep since years: Killer features for me: - Right-click to search in File Explorer (complete directories w/t subdirectories - Open line results in a custom editor, like Notepad++ - Whole-file preview - or: Show some lines before and after the grep finding (configurable) - Search-and-replace, including undo
alexis2b 6y ago
I am a big fan of BareTail and BareGrep when browsing and making sense of any very large set of log files. The pro versions are definitely worth your money: real-time match, regex-to-table log parsing, grep in tail / tail in grep, and all this in an incredibly minimalist UI and a single small exe.
- oxfeed65261 6y ago
  I love Bare Tail Pro. It is fantastic for working with huge, verbose log files and digging out the tiny portions relevant to whatever issue I am working on. The product name is, however, unprofessional at best. Quite simply, it embarrasses me. A partial workaround is to rename the shortcut, executable, directory, etc. to BareMetal Tail.
867-5309 6y ago
would like to have seen a debloater / unfudger on the list but am guessing they haven't progressed much
- faeyanpiraat 6y ago
  What are they for?
  - 867-5309 6y ago
    getting rid of the adware, spyware and bloatware which come with Windows
    - faeyanpiraat 6y ago
      I see. Are you familiar with O&O ShutUp10:Free antispy tool for Windows 10? It can do what you want, and O&O is a respectable company.
      - 867-5309 6y ago
        I hadn't come across it before, will check it out, even though it's not open source
- meibo 6y ago
  If you use a prosumer version of Win 10, debloating is maybe 10 clicks after a reinstall and a registry script if you want to get rid of telemetry altogether.
  - 867-5309 6y ago
    it is still hit and miss, and usually silently undone with Windows Updates
another_kel 6y ago
I'd add UELI[0] — probably the best alfred style launcher. Does almost everything including Everything integration. Also this script[1] for AHK to quckly jump from "Save as" window to folder currently opened in file explorer. [0] — https://ueli.app/#/ https://ueli.app/#/ [1] — https://pastebin.com/cmLVFdbB https://pastebin.com/cmLVFdbB
- trog 6y ago
  Just saw Ueli from the article. Looks really interesting but it seems to be built in Electron. What's its footprint like? I'm currently very happy using the nice lightweight Launchy but it hasn't been updated in a long time. Still works great but requires a bit of tinkering to get it going in Win10, last time I tried.
  - kekebo 6y ago
    Performance wise it's fine for me but it does have some rough edges like: - Moves across the screen for a while when using custom scaling - Doesn't sort by most used result hits (always shows same order) - Hangs for me when I click on results instead of navigating by keyboard - Doesn't have an option to kill apps like Wox But apart from these it does a lot of things quite well.
    - trog 6y ago
      Mostly interested in how much RAM it uses - Launchy using < 9MB for me indexing all my applications + some of my docs. I feel like anything built on Electron is going to be 1GB at least?!
- WhoCaresLies 6y ago
  a browser for an app launcher, we reached new highs, or lows depending on people's taste
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    Only if you're too young to remember IE/DHTML built into Windows Explorer in Windows 9x, when folders were "web pages".
jijji 6y ago
cat ubuntu.iso > /dev/sdb; reboot
- cpach 6y ago
  Or just install WSL…
  - Stierlitz 6y ago
    Or just install MX Linux .. https://mxlinux.org/ https://mxlinux.org/
jmlucjav 6y ago
I would mention Total commander and Quick Access Popup as two well known ones, but two gems that I see are undiscovered are: - TouchCursor https://martin-stone.github.io/touchcursor/ https://martin-stone.github.io/touchcursor/ the only one I found that allows you to use Space as modifier key, and works flawlesly (with other ahk scripts handling hotkeys running simultaneously). Praying it does not stop working with some Win10 update, as it is not being worked one, it seems - https://github.com/zsims/hunt-and-peck https://github.com/zsims/hunt-and-peck for more mouse free operation of any program.
- porpoise 6y ago
  Interesting link about TouchCursor. Personally I prefer to use left alt key instead of space key, as I can hold down the left alt with minimal effort (right alt takes over the duty of left). For this to cause minimal conflict, I use Sharpkey to remap physical left alt to e.g. F16 at the OS level, then define the desired behavior for F16 in ahk.
DrSiemer 6y ago
If you often find yourself renaming files I can highly recommend Flash Renamer. It's $20, but it must have saved me thousands of dollars in production time. Btw, does anybody know of a modern disk usage manager that uses bright, clear individual colors like Space Monger?
- uryga 6y ago
  WizTree work alright, it generates a nice colourful tile plot
- Ennea 6y ago
  As a free alternative to Flash Renamer, PowerRename[0] from the latest PowerToys[1] collection might be worth a look. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/powerrename https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/powerrena... [1] https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
  - diarrhea 6y ago
    PowerRename has worked fine for me, can also recommend it. However, when there's directories and many, many files involved, I just use Python with pathlib. It's a couple lines of code anyone can learn to do, with all the flexibility of Python. PowerShell would maybe also be suitable.
zo1 6y ago
For a command-line tool, I absolutely recommend Conemu (https://conemu.github.io/ https://conemu.github.io/)
- garethrowlands 6y ago
  I used to be a big fan of conemu back when Windows had no terminal support and "console emulation" was the best that could be done. But what advantages does this have over Windows Terminal these days?
  - kroltan 6y ago
    Not sure about ConEmu itself, but Cmder (which uses ConEmu behind the scenes) offers a Quake-style dropdown terminal, and this is reason enough for me :) (If you're on Linux, there's also guake, which I used to use)
molticrystal 6y ago
I'll suggest Process Hacker [0] It is the ultimate Task Manger, open source, supports amazing plugins , and has tons of features that sysinternals Process Explorer lacks. Be sure to get the nightly/3.0 branch , the 2.0 branch is several years old. Also I strongly suggest building the plugins extra repo [1], has some great ones, like a terminator plugin that can kill apps various user and kernel ways. Unfortunately due to a personal dispute with a Webroot employee and Microsoft its signature ended up in antivirus databases, so don't expect any love from Microsoft. They often look at the APIs PH uses and use signature checks and other ways to block/discourage PH from using them. Also expect having to whitelist it with anti-virus products, but the source code is open and you can build it yourself if you don't trust what you are getting. [2] [0] https://wj32.org/processhacker/nightly.php https://wj32.org/processhacker/nightly.php [1] https://github.com/processhacker/plugins-extra/ https://github.com/processhacker/plugins-extra/ [2] https://github.com/processhacker/processhacker/issues/454#issuecomment-731024434 https://github.com/processhacker/processhacker/issues/454#is...
- heroprotagonist 6y ago
  This is a beautiful piece of software. I once configured Process Hacker to automatically pin a crappy piece of corporate software to a specific CPU whenever it started to prevent it from starving the rest of the system. Set-and-forget is so much better than having to constantly deal with the downsides of software you're required to run.
- proactivesvcs 6y ago
  Homepage: https://processhacker.sourceforge.io/ https://processhacker.sourceforge.io/
nickjj 6y ago
I'm surprised Dexpot[0] isn't listed. It's a really great virtual desktop management tool and has a number of things included that's not included with the Windows 10 default virtual desktop feature. Then there's VcXrv[1] to share your clipboard between WSL and Windows, it also lets you run Linux GUI tools in WSL. Essential IMO, if only for clipboard sharing. Sizer[2] is another great tool for quickly resizing and positioning windows programmatically. Amazingly useful for spinning up specific sets of apps quickly. IrfanView[3] is IMO one of the best quick image viewers / editors. It also has handy dev features (batch processing, quickly getting a hex value from an image, etc.). I keep a list of dev related tools I use on Windows too at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use. [0]: https://dexpot.de/?lang=en https://dexpot.de/?lang=en [1]: https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/ [2]: http://www.brianapps.net/sizer4/ http://www.brianapps.net/sizer4/ [3]: https://www.irfanview.com/ https://www.irfanview.com/
- porpoise 6y ago
  Dexpot still works fine even though it hasn't been updated for years. And I love being able to have 9 virtual desktops arranged in a 3x3 grid and a semi-permanent transparent "minimap" of what's on each desktop as well as my current location in the 3x3 grid. But it has an issue which makes it unusable for me, something which may or may not be a bug, i.e. on switching to a desktop, if that desktop contains more than one window, all of them are brought to the front one after another, causing considerable delay if there are >3 windows present. The native win10 virtual desktop feature doesn't seem to have that issue.
- jmlucjav 6y ago
  I see you use multiple monitors, does Sizer play well with them? I discarded it cause I thought it did not support multimonitor setups well. My main use case is setting up some complex layout (in multimonitor), and be able to save it, and restore it when needed.
  - nickjj 6y ago
    > I see you use multiple monitors, does Sizer play well with them? It supports them well. It has a drop down box where you can define the monitor you want for a specific entry and then window positions will be relative to that monitor. Alternatively you can also set a window's position to any X / Y coordinate. So if you had let's say 2x 2560x14440 monitors and you wanted to position a window to the 2nd monitor you can tell Sizer to move it to X coordinate 3050 and it would be +500 pixels into the 2nd monitor. You just need to enable the checkbox "allow move outside screen bounds". That could be useful I guess if you wanted a window to span more than 1 monitor and you have super thin bezels.
jaharios 6y ago
For mouse power users I would recommend StrokesPlus [0] , at first I used mouse gestures as a browser extension but with StrokesPlus you can do it on OS level. You can map everything you want as a gesture and even use multiple key modifiers. You can map the each gesture per app group or global. An ignore list is also there. [0] https://www.strokesplus.com/ https://www.strokesplus.com/
- etlandis 6y ago
  On a similar vein, but also works for multitouch gestures on the trackpad and on touchscreens is GestureSign: https://gesturesign.win/#/ https://gesturesign.win/#/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
CraigJPerry 6y ago
AutoHotKey finally fell off my list, to be replaced by... powershell. After about 8 years of utter disdain for the mistake that is powershell, I’m actually enjoying giving it a proper test drive. I can’t quite believe it myself but i chsh’d to pwsh on my mac and linux boxes too. Goodbye 30 lines of AHK just to capture and parse the output of a RunWait (in practice it was better to create a WSH com object and exec the command from there since it’s only 3 lines of code to grab stdout then).
- AnonymousPlanet 6y ago
  How did you finally get into it? I was stoked about it 15 years ago when I first read about it, but using it never clicked with me. Every now and then I enthusiastically try to embrace it, just to eventually be annoyed by all the clumsiness, lack of speed, or about having to wade through layers of objects just to get to the information I need. It just does not have the feeling of a tool for shell users honed by shell users, but a soulless navigation tool for a Byzantine object structure. I finally decided Powershell is not so much a shell but rather an environment good for scripting. What direction did you come from when embracing it? Did you have a strong background of Unix admin / developer use of shells?
  - CraigJPerry 6y ago
    It’s early days on my test drive. I don’t know how well it’ll fare for fairly common actions in bash like “here documents” or what the equiv of shopt extglob is in pwsh. My usual cli usage is what i’d call “text manipulation” - slicing and dicing command output or converting csv-like data in some way or another. My toolset is the usual suspects - bash, sed & awk but beyond a certain complexity i’ll switch to python. The key thing for me is i can still use grep, sed, awk and python in pipelines as before but i’m attracted by the easy data access in pwsh. The idea that Get-Process returns an object and i can just query each process’s WSS attribute for example is appealing right now (as opposed to explicitly manipulating text to suit, e.g. grep resident /proc/*/statm or ps -o rss or whatever approach)
- majkinetor 6y ago
  AHK is not comparable to powershell. They overlap in some segments but generally, what AHK can do, you would have to reimplement in Posh and it would be slow as hell.
trm42 6y ago
Funny, how big part of the list are Linux-origin projects or WSL. How about really making the switch to Linux instead of trying to make Windows function like Linux?
- c048 6y ago
  Both OS's have up and downsides. What's wrong with emulating parts of other OS's you like, in the OS you like?
  - trm42 6y ago
    Imagine, how much further Linux would be if people (and Microsoft) had used all the energy of trying to make Windows work like Linux instead of actually improving Linux. There has been lots of projects with that goal like Cygwin, Mingw, WSL*. Different virtualization glue layers etc. For most of the part there has been lots of effort to different runtimes (PHP, Python, Docker etc) to make them work better with Windows and the end result usually is that it's a lot more easier to have the same stuff running on top of Real Linux instad of different kind of kludges the Windows versions require.
- eknkc 6y ago
  I've been using WSL and a lot of unix tools on Windows. I have a simple reason: Windows is a much better desktop environment. I tried to switch from macOS to Linux. I've found workarounds / alternatives to almost all of my issues on Linux. One issue seems to be unfixable though; I have a 4K monitor and pretty much required to use fractional scaling. Windows and macOS does it perfectly. I had good luck with Pop!_OS but 1.5x scaling is always blurry on Linux. Apparently it can not do non integer scaling so the current hack is to scale 3x and then resize the framebuffer to half the size. Nope. So I switched to the next best thing: Windows with WSL.
  - diarrhea 6y ago
    This is the exact reason I switched back as well (next to Lightroom). It just works. But it is extremely sad to ditch an entire OS for lack of what seems a manageable issue, fractional scaling. I wish it wouldn't be necessary.
dcpit 6y ago
Mouse ?
turing_complete 6y ago
VS Code is fine and I actually use it quite a bit. Whoever says, it is "hella fast" either never used a really fast text editor or only compares it to Atom.
- spoopyskelly 6y ago
  It's probably because the author is 12 years old. He says hella, bananas and has Beyonce quotes on his list.
- bsenftner 6y ago
  That "hella fast" comment renders his recommendation list suspicious.
- k4rli 6y ago
  VSCodium (https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium) is a better alternative. Same but no Microsoft branding and telemetry.
  - WalterGR 6y ago
    It’s highly improbable that telemetry slows Code down enough (or even by a perceptible amount) that a user would find it “slow” vs. VSCodium.
- g8oz 6y ago
  Exactly, try Notepad++ and then get back to us.
snthd 6y ago
https://pathcopycopy.github.io https://pathcopycopy.github.io >Path Copy Copy is an add-on for Windows Explorer that adds contextual menu items on all files and folders allowing the user to copy the path(s) in various formats. And of course https://alternativeto.net https://alternativeto.net
- olig15 6y ago
  You can do this already (built into windows), by pressing SHIFT+Right Click (shift or alt, not at my PC to check). The context menu will show some extra options, one of which is ‘copy path’
giu 6y ago
Perfect timing. After having used Linux full-time in private and at work for the past 13 years, I had to switch to Windows 10 at my new job. I miss the hell out of my shell, my .zshrc file, and the general "easy" customization of Linux, but I'll be more than happy to see how I'll better adapt to Windows 10 thanks to this list and the tools provided in the comments here. Edit: First thing I'll install is most probably the Windows Subsystem for Linux :)
- hans1729 6y ago
  was about to ask "how are you not running wsl yet" :) if you have any questions, hmu, I switched deliberately to windows 10 from macos on my worklaptop, because wsl + vscode is evil black magic
- netfortius 6y ago
  ... took the cygwin path, instead, in a similar situation (company imposed Win10 laptop), albeit my macbook w/macos + homebrew is still the best combo, which I am also trying to leverage as much as possible for work.
- agustif 6y ago
  You might want to checkout the new Windows Terminal app too for it. You can basically keep your unix/zsh env for windows, I even make aliases for things like open = explorer.exe, ls = dir, etc...
  - etlandis 6y ago
    A nice chunk of unix tools get installed with git (if you select the option to) - you could just add it to your path and it saves on a fair chunk of that aliasing work I think my biggest annoyance with powershell in particular is that curl is aliased into this awkward powershell function by default
    - jodrellblank 6y ago
      > "I think my biggest annoyance with powershell in particular is that curl is aliased into this awkward powershell function by default" Not since August 2016 and the release of PowerShell Core 6. "PowerShell" now refers to the cross-platform branch, currently PowerShell 7.1. The older one with that alias is now "Windows PowerShell", and is legacy and no longer developed.
shash7 6y ago
Can I suggest my own tool? pulltherope.app - Nothing even comes close to how productive this makes me.
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  In the video, why does pulling the rope go through the reminder times 40 minutes, 1 hour, 1 hour 20 minutes, 1 hour 40 minutes, 22 hours, 23 hours, 23 hours 30 minutes, 1 hour 50 minutes, 2 hours?
jankoprowski 6y ago
I'm recommending ScreenPresso [1] great screen capture with rich, useful edition options. [1] https://www.screenpresso.com/ https://www.screenpresso.com/
frankietaylr 6y ago
Everything[0] search is a great file search utility on Windows. This is one sure productivity booster. [0] https://www.voidtools.com/ https://www.voidtools.com/
- RinTohsaka 6y ago
  +1 for this. Works soo much better than Window's search.
- boxmonster 6y ago
  I put this on my father's machine and he thinks it's magic because it finds his files instantly. He still comments on it every once in awhile.
- ukyrgf 6y ago
  Everytime I use this I expect my coworkers to react with "how did you find that so fast!?" and I can share the magic with them, but they're probably just thinking about what to order for lunch.
- ffpip 6y ago
  This is the one app that keeps me from switching to linux as my primary OS
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    can you say what the difference between this and locate/updatedb is? well other than the gui?
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      real time indexing is one pretty big feature.
- ayoisaiah 6y ago
  One of the tools I kept hearing about while on Linux. Really impressed at how fast it is!
the_only_law 6y ago
Am I the only one not a fan of the Office-esque ribbon look on the new WinDbg?
- mech422 6y ago
  I hate these flat, 'phone style' interfaces on desktop apps.. I've never really used Macs but I think my favorite window style/chrome was the old OSX Aqua look.
bsenftner 6y ago
The last mention: Windows Sandbox, has anyone got that to work? I have a monster i9, and Windows Sandbox grinds my system to a halt, and is completely unusable - 10 to 30 seconds to recognize a mouse click or key press. Useless.
- dblohm7 6y ago
  I use it to run Ghidra. I haven’t seen anything like what you’re experiencing.
ourmandave 6y ago
Does anyone have a tool that can do "grep like" searches on a folder of text docs from windows explorer? Right click shelling out and using the FIND command is what I've resorted to so far. =(
- soverance 6y ago
  Check out Binary Fortress' FileSeek
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  Notepad++ and kate text editors can do that
- GordonS 6y ago
  If you want a GUI tool, I like GrepWin[0] - you can have it install an Explorer context menu item, right click, hit GrepWin, then you can search. Supports simple text searches as well as regex. You can filter by filesize too. Been using this for years, really useful tool. On the command line, I just use grep (a cygwin version of it, installed with Git for Windows, I think). [0] https://tools.stefankueng.com/grepWin.html https://tools.stefankueng.com/grepWin.html
- yread 6y ago
  If you use TotalCommander it's just selecting the folders and Alt+F7 for advanced find/grep combination
khalilravanna 6y ago
Semi-related: Has WSL2 fixed the issue where trying to do anything in the host Windows filesystem is interminably slow? Running something like “git status” takes legitimately like 15 seconds if the repo is outside the linux filesystem.
- agf 6y ago
  No, but they're actively working on it. You can mount it as a CIFS share to get somewhat better performance; I believe there are some other hacks to fix specific things like "git status". https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197
- veesahni 6y ago
  VSCode+WSLRemote plugin works really well with code on linux. Full speed command line, full speed code search.
contradictioned 6y ago
Is 7zip really a good format for sharing data? I also use the program for unpacking and I like the context menu integration. However when I send files, I prefer zip because I feel like this is easiest for the recipient to open (no matter if they are using windows, linux, osx, Android...).
- joshspankit 6y ago
  Yes, with one caveat: There are times where you need to send a zip file to someone who does not or cannot install additional tools. I. this case, 7z can cause a “I don’t know what this file is and can’t open it” reply. Of course you can always counter that with “Here’s a zip instead”
- wayneftw 6y ago
  You can change the context menu to default to `.zip` instead of `.7z`.
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  No, IMO. Nobody cares about saving "2-10%" if it means risking a hassle at the customer/user site due to a nonstandard format. If they do care that much about a minuscule incremental win, they probably shouldn't. See the endless flame wars between DjVu advocates and .PDF die-hards for another example. Stick with the standard unless the improvement being offered by the newcomer is drop-dead amazing.
- n4r9 6y ago
  I use 7zip the app for all (de)compression tasks, and use the format itself when the recipient is tech savvy.
- ilyagr 6y ago
  I just had to decompress a 7z file on linux. It is really confusing -- there is no 7unzip command. A random third-party tool decompressed the archive incorrectly. The official p7zip package consists of three or more different command-line tools that are meant to handle any operation you could imagine, with different and weird options. Slogging through them takes quite a bit of manpage reading, and there are hidden gotchas. For example, the "simple interface", p7zip, is optimized for .tar.7z files, and deletes the original archive when decompressing. It is supposed to only do it only if there's one file in the archive, but it happened for me regardless. The correct command is '7z x <file>'. It's quite a contrast from the good experience I had with 7zip on Windows.
tug0fwar 6y ago
Sandboxie[1] is a really handy tool for running isolated processes on Windows. [2] https://www.sandboxie.com/ https://www.sandboxie.com/
xaduha 6y ago
https://github.com/Fleex255/PolicyPlus https://github.com/Fleex255/PolicyPlus
ziml77 6y ago
I found Directory Opus a couple years ago and I love it as a file manager. One of those tools that I didn't mind paying for. I know there's other 2-pane file managers, but this was my favorite after testing them. https://www.gpsoft.com.au/ https://www.gpsoft.com.au/
DethNinja 6y ago
I literally can’t work without Fences: https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/ https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/ It is an amazing feature, I still can’t believe no major OS includes something similar as default.
sidpatil 6y ago
I like TidyTabs [1] and AquaSnap [2] (both by Nurgo Software). They both make window management so much easier. What I'd prefer is an open-source tiling window manager like i3. I've tried bug.n [3], but couldn't get it to work consistently for some reason. [1] https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/tidytabs https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/tidytabs [2] https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/aquasnap https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/aquasnap [3] https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n
- Miner49er 6y ago
  I always had problems with bug.n too. The best tool I've found like a tiling wm on Windows is PyleWM: https://github.com/GGLucas/PyleWM https://github.com/GGLucas/PyleWM
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
For day-to-day development, WSL is definitely better. But I think MSYS2 [0] still deserves a mention in the age of Windows Subsystem for Linux. It's a complete mingw-w64 distribution with a friendly package manager (ArchLinux's pacman). If you suddenly need to use some CLI tools on a Windows machine, MSYS2 can be quicker - no need to enable virtualization or upgrade Windows 10, just download a 91 MB installer and you can start right away. I recently needed to use wget on Windows to solve a problem for someone, instead of MSYS2, I made the mistake of downloading a random Windows build at SourceForge, later I was hit by a bug... [0] https://www.msys2.org/ https://www.msys2.org/
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Indeed I still use git bash on a secondary Windows box, lots faster and more functional in a few ways with a VM.
com2kid 6y ago
Switcher, let's you change to a window by typing its name. By far the best utility for navigating open apps.
- ayoisaiah 6y ago
  Do you mean Switcheroo? That's the one I use
  - com2kid 6y ago
    Also a great app! I have switcher on my desktop, switcheroo on my laptop. Both work quite well.
pyrophane 6y ago
Once Windows 10 supports linux GUI apps by default in WSL 2, that will be huge. At that point it should be easy to develop completely in Linux, only on Windows. I've gotten this working with some extra tools, and the experience is pretty good, but it is still a bit too fiddly for me to consider it as a primary solution for everyday development.
- kjaftaedi 6y ago
  You probably have a solution that works for you, but you could configure vscode to develop against a linux instance in the cloud over ssh. Then you could test the gui apps with xwindow forwarding over ssh. I use putty/xming for this.
_zamorano_ 6y ago
Missing TortoiseGit in that list. Everytime I see someone struggling with Git I wonder why they don't take the easy way.
ayoisaiah 6y ago
My suggestion: O&O ShutUp10 [1] It allows you to control your privacy by deactivating various Windows functions, and you don't even need to install it. [0]: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
elrostelperien 6y ago
Surprised no one suggested AllDup. It's the best tool I've seen for working with duplicates: http://www.alldup.info/en_download_alldup.php http://www.alldup.info/en_download_alldup.php

441 points by fomine3 6y ago

I'd add Directory Opus[0] to that list. It's an incredibly customizable and scriptable file explorer that allows you to fit it exactly to your workflow. It's like IntelliJ of file explorers. - Tabbed interface with multiple panes - Every function can be assigned a shortcut - Every button can be scripted - Defaults can be overwritten - Dynamic layouts based on folder contents, path or determined by a script - Custom file previews, context menus, rename scripts - Hooks for reacting to different events - Every corner of the UI is themable - Virtual filesystem for archiving and bookkeeping - ... One disadvantage is that you have to use an ancient version of JScript (ES3 / Microsoft flavor) or VBScript (possibly because of the need for communicating over a COM interface). Or use its own DSL for simpler scripts. I wish it had support for a more modern / more popular languages for scripting. I wonder if QuickJS[1] can be integrated into it. Or Python. That would be really sweet. [0]: https://www.gpsoft.com.au/ https://www.gpsoft.com.au/ [1]: https://bellard.org/quickjs/ https://bellard.org/quickjs/

Osiris 6y ago
Another robust file explorer is xplorer2.
immigrantsheep 6y ago
I've been a dopus user since the Amiga days. Love it
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
It's probably using the Active Scripting interfaces for scripts. I seem to remember that Python supports those interfaces so that might be an option.
yread 6y ago
Or TotalCommander. Directory synchronization, integrated diff, Sftp support, renaming multiple files, lister to intelligently view contents of a file, 10s of years of plugins
rkagerer 6y ago
I tried Directory Opus today. Is there any way I can make the menu bar about half the height?
- abdusco 6y ago
  Some components are Win32 primitives, and it may not be possible to modify them. You could try asking it in the forum[0]? Lead developer is quite responsive. https://resource.dopus.com/ https://resource.dopus.com/
  - rkagerer 6y ago
    Thanks. It is actually possible to reduce the height of standard Windows menu bars via system metrics. These look somewhat non-standard and don't respect that.

fomine3 6y ago

I'll replace WinDirStat with WizTree. It loads immediately because of reading local disk MFT.

dspillett 6y ago
I tend to use WizTree for local NTFS volumes where it's MFT analysis benefit is present, it can be so much faster it almost seems like magic. For everything else on Windows (network mounts, fat/exfat) I currently use Space Sniffer (http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/ http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/) One thing issue with WizTree is that drawing the result is slow for large trees (a volume with a great many files spread over a the structure) compared to other programs. For one of my local volume at work which happens to include an archive copy of a huge (for VSS) source safe repository WizTree is slower despite the MFT shenanigans because drawing the result after takes enough time to undo the advantage. Though this is on SSD - I expect WizTree would reclaim the speed crown for this dataset on a "traditional" disk, where the reduced random access IO requirements of its MFT scan will be even more significant.
- Tempest1981 6y ago
  How slow are you experiencing? For me, I think it rarely takes more than 2 or 3 seconds for the entire drive. Great program, free, but I donated.
  - dspillett 6y ago
    > How slow are you experiencing? Having retested not I have local access to that filesystem again, the issue seems to be when used remote via RDC, even over a local wifi network. Running properly local the delay goes away in even the pathological case. As SpaceSniffer has no similar bad slow-down on display updates, I assume that means how WizTree draws interacts badly with the remoting protocol: either it is drawing in small steps and RDC is trying to send each update out individually so many small updates are going over the wire, or the 3D-ish look is causing issues, or both.
Osiris 6y ago

Jamie9912 6y ago

I would add ClipX (https://bluemars.org/clipx/ https://bluemars.org/clipx/) to that list, its extremely handy to bring up a small window of my past clipboards with a hotkey. It's also extremely lightweight

JohnCoden 6y ago
I use CLCL (https://nakka.com/soft/clcl/index_eng.html https://nakka.com/soft/clcl/index_eng.html) which looks quite similar.
Jasonnor 6y ago
I think clipboard history (Win + V) in Win10 is completely enough to replace ClipX.
- Jamie9912 6y ago
  I don't like the whole Cloud sync thign

fomine3 6y ago

Seeing diff from 2014 is interesting. Maybe this year's list is a bit reduced version. Also MS' apps replaced some 3rd party apps. Example: Chocolatey -> WinGet, GOW -> WSL, F.lux -> removed (maybe alt: Win10 supports night mode), Notepad2/Sublime -> VSCode

jhvkjhk 6y ago

I wonder why the author recommend winget but not scoop. Scoop obviously has more community support and that's the most important part of a package manager (more packages, more frequent update, etc).

runjake 6y ago
Winget is the de facto official package manager for Windows. It is or will be included with Windows. I know it’s included in the Insider builds.
- timvisee 6y ago
  It is a mess though, and quite incapable.
  - mark_and_sweep 6y ago
    Agreed. winget is lacking most features I absolutely need from a package manager, including listing installed packages, uninstalling packages, and updating packages. These are all on the v1 roadmap [1], but for the foreseeable future I'm sticking with scoop. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/blob/master/doc/windows-package-manager-v1-roadmap.md https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/blob/master/doc/wind...
- cm2187 6y ago
  But what package list does it have? That’s the primary criteria. A package manager with no package isn’t of much use.
  - easton 6y ago
    https://github.com/Microsoft/winget-pkgs https://github.com/Microsoft/winget-pkgs Pretty much everything major with a installer is covered.
kekebo 6y ago
Any upsides to scoop compared to chocolatey?

grayhat 6y ago

I'd add Far Manager, which has been THE file manager for more than 15 years for me on Windows. BSD license: https://www.farmanager.com/download.php?l=en https://www.farmanager.com/download.php?l=en I wish it was ported to Linux and I'd probably never use midnight commander again

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
iaml 6y ago
https://github.com/elfmz/far2l/ https://github.com/elfmz/far2l/

mrweasel 6y ago

Sort of a side note: Exceptional Mac programs are often showcased and awarded. Either by Apple or others in the Mac “community”. Is there example from the Windows side? Programs that highlight the very best the Windows platform can deliver?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
phendrenad2 6y ago
I think that there are simply too many to spotlight.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  I think that Microsoft just don't care.
  - mrweasel 6y ago
    That’s sort of my take as well. I can’t think of a single Windows program that would wish was available to me on the Mac or Linux. You never hear a company advertising that their product is only feasable thanks to the features provided in the .Net framework, or that their application takes advantage of the foundation provided by Windows. I not saying that Windows is bad, it’s a truck, meant for business, and games. It’s just that there aren’t any overwhelming programs which could only exist on Windows. Many programs don’t even feel completly native to the platform, and basic features like drag’n drop, copy’n paste or shortcut are frequently a little hit and miss, it have become much better, but still, it’s a little late. Visual Code is a fantastic product, but it’s not really a Windows application. That sort of tells me that not ever Microsoft really believe that Windows have that much to offer on the desktop, that you can’t just replace it with web technologies.
    - wayneftw 6y ago
      TLDR; My main question for you - What kinds of programs do you think could only exist on a Mac or Linux which could not possibly work on Windows? > You never hear a company advertising that their product is only feasable thanks to the features provided in the .Net framework... Yes you do. There are whole companies (and publications) that only exist thanks to the .NET framework and before that, Visual Basic. How many "Swift/Obj-C component companies" are there? On the .NET side I can count at least 2 big ones off the top of my head (DevExpress and Telerik), but I'm probably forgetting dozens more from decades past. If these companies and their customers were already being served by Java or Obj-C then .NET would never have taken off. Outside of the .NET components business, there is a whole class of applications which would be extremely difficult to develop and maintain on Mac and Linux. Programs like TortoiseGit which heavily customize the Windows Explorer and other bits of the Windows UI in ways which Apple would never provide APIs for. On Linux, to develop apps like these you'd have cover to much of the fragmented landscape of desktop environments. I still miss TortoiseGit on my Linux desktop. AutoHotKey is also in another class of apps that I can't see existing for Mac or Linux. Automating Win32 is easy because you can hook into everything and there's a stable, unfragmented landscape. Here's something I recently did with AutoHotKey - created a 2 line script that waited for a "HID key/Special key/Media key" to be pressed and ran a program. On a Mac you'll be writing a whole custom program or hunting down an obscure utility. On Linux, you'll cobble together a few different programs depending on your DE setup. On my Mac, I had trouble even finding a program [0] that would show me what keyboard keys were pressed so I could use the key id in my script, like this - https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/KeyList.htm#SpecialKeys https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/KeyList.htm#SpecialKeys > I not saying that Windows is bad, it’s a truck, meant for business, and games. It's a general purpose OS, just like Mac and Linux. If Windows is a truck, all three of them are trucks. > It’s just that there aren’t any overwhelming programs which could only exist on Windows. What kinds of programs do you think could only exist on a Mac or Linux which could not possibly work on Windows? > Many programs don’t even feel completly native to the platform, and basic features like drag’n drop, copy’n paste or shortcut are frequently a little hit and miss, it have become much better, but still, it’s a little late. Not sure specifically what you're talking about here. But - a little late for what? The vast majority of desktop users and more than half of all programmers are already on Windows. I've never had problems with basic features like cut/copy/paste or window management on Windows. On my Mac I've given up on trying to fix the lack of window management features and the inability to do things with keyboard like "pressing just delete to delete a file". On my main workstations I had to cobble together various scripts and obscure utilities to do things Windows does, such as "use this hotkey to move window to other monitor" (for XFCE). > Visual Code is a fantastic product... It's called Visual Studio Code or VS Code. > ...it’s not really a Windows application. That sort of tells me that not ever Microsoft really believe that Windows have that much to offer on the desktop... Nah, they built VS Code as part of their expansion into cloud services so they could market those services to Mac and Linux programmers more easily. Electron is just the path of least resistance for building cross-platform apps. They couldn't use Windows-only tech to build it because of course Windows-only tech is a bad way to build cross-platform apps. [0] - Just found this today, but note the comment on the second answer that "it doesn't work for media keys" which was my problem. Also, the first answer doesn't show you key codes just highlights the key being pressed. - https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/40192/how-can-i-tell-exactly-what-keys-are-being-pressed-on-the-mac/40199 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/40192/how-can-i-te... [1] - Not sure what Core ML can do that ML.NET cannot but here's an article highlighting a company using ML.NET - https://sigparser.com/developers/email-parsing/sentiment-analysis/ https://sigparser.com/developers/email-parsing/sentiment-ana... [2] More here - https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/machinelearning-ai/ml-dotnet/customers https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/machinelearning-ai/ml-dotn...

rkagerer 6y ago

What do folks think of the recommended WinMerge and Perforce Visual Merge, over Beyond Compare? I've been using Beyond Compare for years and have yet to see anything I like better. Total Uninstall should also be on this list, to keep your machine clean if you're like me and try out dozens or hundreds of different software titles per year. SysInternals belongs up there with NirSoft. I used Teracopy for a while but found it buggy on occasion and worried about forgetting what I had queued. If it's gotten better I might give it another whirl. I've got a slew of great utilities I've collected over the years which I find indispensible on Windows. There's a lot of overlap with Scott's, but I think he's missing some gems. Could share my own list if anyone is interested.

abdusco 6y ago
In the same field as Total Uninstall, there's Bulk Crap Uninstaller[0] that helps you stay sane when fixing up a relative's computer. It finds and helps you uninstall applications unattended, also removes leftover files after the uninstallation. [0]: https://github.com/Klocman/Bulk-Crap-Uninstaller https://github.com/Klocman/Bulk-Crap-Uninstaller
jimbob45 6y ago
Shout-out to TortoiseDiff over WinMerge/BC3. I routinely get my best results with it because of its superior usability (and it’s free!).
- GordonS 6y ago
  Is TortoiseDiff available standalone, or does it only come with/as part of TortoiseSVN?
  - jimbob45 6y ago
    I’m sure you can get it alone somehow. The whole package is useful though, whether through TortoiseSVN or TortoiseGit.
tailspin2019 6y ago

Ayesh 6y ago

Compared to Windows Terminal, I started to use Fluent Terminal (also on Microsoft store), and it is amazing! It crashed a few times at first, but it's customizable, has a settings UI, and is just as fast and nicer looking compared to Windows Terminal. X-Mouse button control is another app I absolutely love. It replaced my Logitech Options, and works quite nice, and quietly sits doing just that.

Tempest1981 6y ago
Windows Terminal allows some customization, via the settings Jason file. Colors, watermark image. I think they're working on a GUI for settings. That said, the rate of fixes seems to have slowed.
kekebo 6y ago
It seems nice but using WSL(2) Windows Terminal is noticeably faster for me, same compared to most other alternatives including Cmder/ConEmu. While Windows Terminal doesn't have a settings UI (yet[0]) it does allow for theming, this page[1] features a range of color schemes that you can define and set in your settings.json. There's also a wrapper that allows for quake style drop down [2] until it's implemented by Windows Terminal itself[0]. [0] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/main/doc/terminal-v2-roadmap.md#20-scenarios https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/main/doc/terminal... [1] https://windowsterminalthemes.dev/ https://windowsterminalthemes.dev/ [2] https://github.com/flyingpie/windows-terminal-quake https://github.com/flyingpie/windows-terminal-quake
turing_complete 6y ago
The year is 2020 and people think a terminal that crashes a few times is "amazing". That is amazing.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Terminals are thirty years behind on Windows but catching up fast. I blame Balmer and his ilk.

idiocrat 6y ago

I like dnGrep. It searches inside archives, Excel files and other MS Office documents. Supports replace. [0]: http://dngrep.github.io/ http://dngrep.github.io/

t00r 6y ago
Using dnGrep since years: Killer features for me: - Right-click to search in File Explorer (complete directories w/t subdirectories - Open line results in a custom editor, like Notepad++ - Whole-file preview - or: Show some lines before and after the grep finding (configurable) - Search-and-replace, including undo

alexis2b 6y ago

I am a big fan of BareTail and BareGrep when browsing and making sense of any very large set of log files. The pro versions are definitely worth your money: real-time match, regex-to-table log parsing, grep in tail / tail in grep, and all this in an incredibly minimalist UI and a single small exe.

oxfeed65261 6y ago
I love Bare Tail Pro. It is fantastic for working with huge, verbose log files and digging out the tiny portions relevant to whatever issue I am working on. The product name is, however, unprofessional at best. Quite simply, it embarrasses me. A partial workaround is to rename the shortcut, executable, directory, etc. to BareMetal Tail.

867-5309 6y ago

would like to have seen a debloater / unfudger on the list but am guessing they haven't progressed much

faeyanpiraat 6y ago
What are they for?
- 867-5309 6y ago
  getting rid of the adware, spyware and bloatware which come with Windows
  - faeyanpiraat 6y ago
    I see. Are you familiar with O&O ShutUp10:Free antispy tool for Windows 10? It can do what you want, and O&O is a respectable company.
    - 867-5309 6y ago
      I hadn't come across it before, will check it out, even though it's not open source
meibo 6y ago
If you use a prosumer version of Win 10, debloating is maybe 10 clicks after a reinstall and a registry script if you want to get rid of telemetry altogether.
- 867-5309 6y ago
  it is still hit and miss, and usually silently undone with Windows Updates

another_kel 6y ago

I'd add UELI[0] — probably the best alfred style launcher. Does almost everything including Everything integration. Also this script[1] for AHK to quckly jump from "Save as" window to folder currently opened in file explorer. [0] — https://ueli.app/#/ https://ueli.app/#/ [1] — https://pastebin.com/cmLVFdbB https://pastebin.com/cmLVFdbB

trog 6y ago
Just saw Ueli from the article. Looks really interesting but it seems to be built in Electron. What's its footprint like? I'm currently very happy using the nice lightweight Launchy but it hasn't been updated in a long time. Still works great but requires a bit of tinkering to get it going in Win10, last time I tried.
- kekebo 6y ago
  Performance wise it's fine for me but it does have some rough edges like: - Moves across the screen for a while when using custom scaling - Doesn't sort by most used result hits (always shows same order) - Hangs for me when I click on results instead of navigating by keyboard - Doesn't have an option to kill apps like Wox But apart from these it does a lot of things quite well.
  - trog 6y ago
    Mostly interested in how much RAM it uses - Launchy using < 9MB for me indexing all my applications + some of my docs. I feel like anything built on Electron is going to be 1GB at least?!
WhoCaresLies 6y ago
a browser for an app launcher, we reached new highs, or lows depending on people's taste
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  Only if you're too young to remember IE/DHTML built into Windows Explorer in Windows 9x, when folders were "web pages".

jijji 6y ago

cat ubuntu.iso > /dev/sdb; reboot

cpach 6y ago
Or just install WSL…
- Stierlitz 6y ago
  Or just install MX Linux .. https://mxlinux.org/ https://mxlinux.org/

jmlucjav 6y ago

I would mention Total commander and Quick Access Popup as two well known ones, but two gems that I see are undiscovered are: - TouchCursor https://martin-stone.github.io/touchcursor/ https://martin-stone.github.io/touchcursor/ the only one I found that allows you to use Space as modifier key, and works flawlesly (with other ahk scripts handling hotkeys running simultaneously). Praying it does not stop working with some Win10 update, as it is not being worked one, it seems - https://github.com/zsims/hunt-and-peck https://github.com/zsims/hunt-and-peck for more mouse free operation of any program.

porpoise 6y ago
Interesting link about TouchCursor. Personally I prefer to use left alt key instead of space key, as I can hold down the left alt with minimal effort (right alt takes over the duty of left). For this to cause minimal conflict, I use Sharpkey to remap physical left alt to e.g. F16 at the OS level, then define the desired behavior for F16 in ahk.

DrSiemer 6y ago

If you often find yourself renaming files I can highly recommend Flash Renamer. It's $20, but it must have saved me thousands of dollars in production time. Btw, does anybody know of a modern disk usage manager that uses bright, clear individual colors like Space Monger?

uryga 6y ago
WizTree work alright, it generates a nice colourful tile plot
Ennea 6y ago
As a free alternative to Flash Renamer, PowerRename[0] from the latest PowerToys[1] collection might be worth a look. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/powerrename https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/powerrena... [1] https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
- diarrhea 6y ago
  PowerRename has worked fine for me, can also recommend it. However, when there's directories and many, many files involved, I just use Python with pathlib. It's a couple lines of code anyone can learn to do, with all the flexibility of Python. PowerShell would maybe also be suitable.

zo1 6y ago

For a command-line tool, I absolutely recommend Conemu (https://conemu.github.io/ https://conemu.github.io/)

garethrowlands 6y ago
I used to be a big fan of conemu back when Windows had no terminal support and "console emulation" was the best that could be done. But what advantages does this have over Windows Terminal these days?
- kroltan 6y ago
  Not sure about ConEmu itself, but Cmder (which uses ConEmu behind the scenes) offers a Quake-style dropdown terminal, and this is reason enough for me :) (If you're on Linux, there's also guake, which I used to use)

molticrystal 6y ago

I'll suggest Process Hacker [0] It is the ultimate Task Manger, open source, supports amazing plugins , and has tons of features that sysinternals Process Explorer lacks. Be sure to get the nightly/3.0 branch , the 2.0 branch is several years old. Also I strongly suggest building the plugins extra repo [1], has some great ones, like a terminator plugin that can kill apps various user and kernel ways. Unfortunately due to a personal dispute with a Webroot employee and Microsoft its signature ended up in antivirus databases, so don't expect any love from Microsoft. They often look at the APIs PH uses and use signature checks and other ways to block/discourage PH from using them. Also expect having to whitelist it with anti-virus products, but the source code is open and you can build it yourself if you don't trust what you are getting. [2] [0] https://wj32.org/processhacker/nightly.php https://wj32.org/processhacker/nightly.php [1] https://github.com/processhacker/plugins-extra/ https://github.com/processhacker/plugins-extra/ [2] https://github.com/processhacker/processhacker/issues/454#issuecomment-731024434 https://github.com/processhacker/processhacker/issues/454#is...

heroprotagonist 6y ago
This is a beautiful piece of software. I once configured Process Hacker to automatically pin a crappy piece of corporate software to a specific CPU whenever it started to prevent it from starving the rest of the system. Set-and-forget is so much better than having to constantly deal with the downsides of software you're required to run.
proactivesvcs 6y ago
Homepage: https://processhacker.sourceforge.io/ https://processhacker.sourceforge.io/

nickjj 6y ago

I'm surprised Dexpot[0] isn't listed. It's a really great virtual desktop management tool and has a number of things included that's not included with the Windows 10 default virtual desktop feature. Then there's VcXrv[1] to share your clipboard between WSL and Windows, it also lets you run Linux GUI tools in WSL. Essential IMO, if only for clipboard sharing. Sizer[2] is another great tool for quickly resizing and positioning windows programmatically. Amazingly useful for spinning up specific sets of apps quickly. IrfanView[3] is IMO one of the best quick image viewers / editors. It also has handy dev features (batch processing, quickly getting a hex value from an image, etc.). I keep a list of dev related tools I use on Windows too at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use. [0]: https://dexpot.de/?lang=en https://dexpot.de/?lang=en [1]: https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/ [2]: http://www.brianapps.net/sizer4/ http://www.brianapps.net/sizer4/ [3]: https://www.irfanview.com/ https://www.irfanview.com/

porpoise 6y ago
Dexpot still works fine even though it hasn't been updated for years. And I love being able to have 9 virtual desktops arranged in a 3x3 grid and a semi-permanent transparent "minimap" of what's on each desktop as well as my current location in the 3x3 grid. But it has an issue which makes it unusable for me, something which may or may not be a bug, i.e. on switching to a desktop, if that desktop contains more than one window, all of them are brought to the front one after another, causing considerable delay if there are >3 windows present. The native win10 virtual desktop feature doesn't seem to have that issue.
jmlucjav 6y ago
I see you use multiple monitors, does Sizer play well with them? I discarded it cause I thought it did not support multimonitor setups well. My main use case is setting up some complex layout (in multimonitor), and be able to save it, and restore it when needed.
- nickjj 6y ago
  > I see you use multiple monitors, does Sizer play well with them? It supports them well. It has a drop down box where you can define the monitor you want for a specific entry and then window positions will be relative to that monitor. Alternatively you can also set a window's position to any X / Y coordinate. So if you had let's say 2x 2560x14440 monitors and you wanted to position a window to the 2nd monitor you can tell Sizer to move it to X coordinate 3050 and it would be +500 pixels into the 2nd monitor. You just need to enable the checkbox "allow move outside screen bounds". That could be useful I guess if you wanted a window to span more than 1 monitor and you have super thin bezels.

jaharios 6y ago

For mouse power users I would recommend StrokesPlus [0] , at first I used mouse gestures as a browser extension but with StrokesPlus you can do it on OS level. You can map everything you want as a gesture and even use multiple key modifiers. You can map the each gesture per app group or global. An ignore list is also there. [0] https://www.strokesplus.com/ https://www.strokesplus.com/

etlandis 6y ago
On a similar vein, but also works for multitouch gestures on the trackpad and on touchscreens is GestureSign: https://gesturesign.win/#/ https://gesturesign.win/#/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

CraigJPerry 6y ago

AutoHotKey finally fell off my list, to be replaced by... powershell. After about 8 years of utter disdain for the mistake that is powershell, I’m actually enjoying giving it a proper test drive. I can’t quite believe it myself but i chsh’d to pwsh on my mac and linux boxes too. Goodbye 30 lines of AHK just to capture and parse the output of a RunWait (in practice it was better to create a WSH com object and exec the command from there since it’s only 3 lines of code to grab stdout then).

AnonymousPlanet 6y ago
How did you finally get into it? I was stoked about it 15 years ago when I first read about it, but using it never clicked with me. Every now and then I enthusiastically try to embrace it, just to eventually be annoyed by all the clumsiness, lack of speed, or about having to wade through layers of objects just to get to the information I need. It just does not have the feeling of a tool for shell users honed by shell users, but a soulless navigation tool for a Byzantine object structure. I finally decided Powershell is not so much a shell but rather an environment good for scripting. What direction did you come from when embracing it? Did you have a strong background of Unix admin / developer use of shells?
- CraigJPerry 6y ago
  It’s early days on my test drive. I don’t know how well it’ll fare for fairly common actions in bash like “here documents” or what the equiv of shopt extglob is in pwsh. My usual cli usage is what i’d call “text manipulation” - slicing and dicing command output or converting csv-like data in some way or another. My toolset is the usual suspects - bash, sed & awk but beyond a certain complexity i’ll switch to python. The key thing for me is i can still use grep, sed, awk and python in pipelines as before but i’m attracted by the easy data access in pwsh. The idea that Get-Process returns an object and i can just query each process’s WSS attribute for example is appealing right now (as opposed to explicitly manipulating text to suit, e.g. grep resident /proc/*/statm or ps -o rss or whatever approach)
majkinetor 6y ago
AHK is not comparable to powershell. They overlap in some segments but generally, what AHK can do, you would have to reimplement in Posh and it would be slow as hell.

trm42 6y ago

Funny, how big part of the list are Linux-origin projects or WSL. How about really making the switch to Linux instead of trying to make Windows function like Linux?

c048 6y ago
Both OS's have up and downsides. What's wrong with emulating parts of other OS's you like, in the OS you like?
- trm42 6y ago
  Imagine, how much further Linux would be if people (and Microsoft) had used all the energy of trying to make Windows work like Linux instead of actually improving Linux. There has been lots of projects with that goal like Cygwin, Mingw, WSL*. Different virtualization glue layers etc. For most of the part there has been lots of effort to different runtimes (PHP, Python, Docker etc) to make them work better with Windows and the end result usually is that it's a lot more easier to have the same stuff running on top of Real Linux instad of different kind of kludges the Windows versions require.
eknkc 6y ago
I've been using WSL and a lot of unix tools on Windows. I have a simple reason: Windows is a much better desktop environment. I tried to switch from macOS to Linux. I've found workarounds / alternatives to almost all of my issues on Linux. One issue seems to be unfixable though; I have a 4K monitor and pretty much required to use fractional scaling. Windows and macOS does it perfectly. I had good luck with Pop!_OS but 1.5x scaling is always blurry on Linux. Apparently it can not do non integer scaling so the current hack is to scale 3x and then resize the framebuffer to half the size. Nope. So I switched to the next best thing: Windows with WSL.
- diarrhea 6y ago
  This is the exact reason I switched back as well (next to Lightroom). It just works. But it is extremely sad to ditch an entire OS for lack of what seems a manageable issue, fractional scaling. I wish it wouldn't be necessary.

dcpit 6y ago

Mouse ?

turing_complete 6y ago

VS Code is fine and I actually use it quite a bit. Whoever says, it is "hella fast" either never used a really fast text editor or only compares it to Atom.

spoopyskelly 6y ago
It's probably because the author is 12 years old. He says hella, bananas and has Beyonce quotes on his list.
bsenftner 6y ago
That "hella fast" comment renders his recommendation list suspicious.
k4rli 6y ago
VSCodium (https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium) is a better alternative. Same but no Microsoft branding and telemetry.
- WalterGR 6y ago
  It’s highly improbable that telemetry slows Code down enough (or even by a perceptible amount) that a user would find it “slow” vs. VSCodium.
g8oz 6y ago
Exactly, try Notepad++ and then get back to us.

snthd 6y ago

https://pathcopycopy.github.io https://pathcopycopy.github.io >Path Copy Copy is an add-on for Windows Explorer that adds contextual menu items on all files and folders allowing the user to copy the path(s) in various formats. And of course https://alternativeto.net https://alternativeto.net

olig15 6y ago
You can do this already (built into windows), by pressing SHIFT+Right Click (shift or alt, not at my PC to check). The context menu will show some extra options, one of which is ‘copy path’

giu 6y ago

Perfect timing. After having used Linux full-time in private and at work for the past 13 years, I had to switch to Windows 10 at my new job. I miss the hell out of my shell, my .zshrc file, and the general "easy" customization of Linux, but I'll be more than happy to see how I'll better adapt to Windows 10 thanks to this list and the tools provided in the comments here. Edit: First thing I'll install is most probably the Windows Subsystem for Linux :)

hans1729 6y ago
was about to ask "how are you not running wsl yet" :) if you have any questions, hmu, I switched deliberately to windows 10 from macos on my worklaptop, because wsl + vscode is evil black magic
netfortius 6y ago
... took the cygwin path, instead, in a similar situation (company imposed Win10 laptop), albeit my macbook w/macos + homebrew is still the best combo, which I am also trying to leverage as much as possible for work.
agustif 6y ago
You might want to checkout the new Windows Terminal app too for it. You can basically keep your unix/zsh env for windows, I even make aliases for things like open = explorer.exe, ls = dir, etc...
- etlandis 6y ago
  A nice chunk of unix tools get installed with git (if you select the option to) - you could just add it to your path and it saves on a fair chunk of that aliasing work I think my biggest annoyance with powershell in particular is that curl is aliased into this awkward powershell function by default
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    > "I think my biggest annoyance with powershell in particular is that curl is aliased into this awkward powershell function by default" Not since August 2016 and the release of PowerShell Core 6. "PowerShell" now refers to the cross-platform branch, currently PowerShell 7.1. The older one with that alias is now "Windows PowerShell", and is legacy and no longer developed.

shash7 6y ago

Can I suggest my own tool? pulltherope.app - Nothing even comes close to how productive this makes me.

jodrellblank 6y ago
In the video, why does pulling the rope go through the reminder times 40 minutes, 1 hour, 1 hour 20 minutes, 1 hour 40 minutes, 22 hours, 23 hours, 23 hours 30 minutes, 1 hour 50 minutes, 2 hours?

jankoprowski 6y ago

I'm recommending ScreenPresso [1] great screen capture with rich, useful edition options. [1] https://www.screenpresso.com/ https://www.screenpresso.com/

frankietaylr 6y ago

Everything[0] search is a great file search utility on Windows. This is one sure productivity booster. [0] https://www.voidtools.com/ https://www.voidtools.com/

RinTohsaka 6y ago
+1 for this. Works soo much better than Window's search.
boxmonster 6y ago
I put this on my father's machine and he thinks it's magic because it finds his files instantly. He still comments on it every once in awhile.
ukyrgf 6y ago
Everytime I use this I expect my coworkers to react with "how did you find that so fast!?" and I can share the magic with them, but they're probably just thinking about what to order for lunch.
ffpip 6y ago
This is the one app that keeps me from switching to linux as my primary OS
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  can you say what the difference between this and locate/updatedb is? well other than the gui?
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    real time indexing is one pretty big feature.
ayoisaiah 6y ago
One of the tools I kept hearing about while on Linux. Really impressed at how fast it is!

the_only_law 6y ago

Am I the only one not a fan of the Office-esque ribbon look on the new WinDbg?

mech422 6y ago
I hate these flat, 'phone style' interfaces on desktop apps.. I've never really used Macs but I think my favorite window style/chrome was the old OSX Aqua look.

bsenftner 6y ago

The last mention: Windows Sandbox, has anyone got that to work? I have a monster i9, and Windows Sandbox grinds my system to a halt, and is completely unusable - 10 to 30 seconds to recognize a mouse click or key press. Useless.

dblohm7 6y ago
I use it to run Ghidra. I haven’t seen anything like what you’re experiencing.

ourmandave 6y ago

Does anyone have a tool that can do "grep like" searches on a folder of text docs from windows explorer? Right click shelling out and using the FIND command is what I've resorted to so far. =(

soverance 6y ago
Check out Binary Fortress' FileSeek
MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
Notepad++ and kate text editors can do that
GordonS 6y ago
If you want a GUI tool, I like GrepWin[0] - you can have it install an Explorer context menu item, right click, hit GrepWin, then you can search. Supports simple text searches as well as regex. You can filter by filesize too. Been using this for years, really useful tool. On the command line, I just use grep (a cygwin version of it, installed with Git for Windows, I think). [0] https://tools.stefankueng.com/grepWin.html https://tools.stefankueng.com/grepWin.html
yread 6y ago
If you use TotalCommander it's just selecting the folders and Alt+F7 for advanced find/grep combination

khalilravanna 6y ago

Semi-related: Has WSL2 fixed the issue where trying to do anything in the host Windows filesystem is interminably slow? Running something like “git status” takes legitimately like 15 seconds if the repo is outside the linux filesystem.

agf 6y ago
No, but they're actively working on it. You can mount it as a CIFS share to get somewhat better performance; I believe there are some other hacks to fix specific things like "git status". https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197
veesahni 6y ago
VSCode+WSLRemote plugin works really well with code on linux. Full speed command line, full speed code search.

contradictioned 6y ago

Is 7zip really a good format for sharing data? I also use the program for unpacking and I like the context menu integration. However when I send files, I prefer zip because I feel like this is easiest for the recipient to open (no matter if they are using windows, linux, osx, Android...).

joshspankit 6y ago
Yes, with one caveat: There are times where you need to send a zip file to someone who does not or cannot install additional tools. I. this case, 7z can cause a “I don’t know what this file is and can’t open it” reply. Of course you can always counter that with “Here’s a zip instead”
wayneftw 6y ago
You can change the context menu to default to `.zip` instead of `.7z`.
CamperBob2 6y ago
No, IMO. Nobody cares about saving "2-10%" if it means risking a hassle at the customer/user site due to a nonstandard format. If they do care that much about a minuscule incremental win, they probably shouldn't. See the endless flame wars between DjVu advocates and .PDF die-hards for another example. Stick with the standard unless the improvement being offered by the newcomer is drop-dead amazing.
n4r9 6y ago
I use 7zip the app for all (de)compression tasks, and use the format itself when the recipient is tech savvy.
ilyagr 6y ago
I just had to decompress a 7z file on linux. It is really confusing -- there is no 7unzip command. A random third-party tool decompressed the archive incorrectly. The official p7zip package consists of three or more different command-line tools that are meant to handle any operation you could imagine, with different and weird options. Slogging through them takes quite a bit of manpage reading, and there are hidden gotchas. For example, the "simple interface", p7zip, is optimized for .tar.7z files, and deletes the original archive when decompressing. It is supposed to only do it only if there's one file in the archive, but it happened for me regardless. The correct command is '7z x <file>'. It's quite a contrast from the good experience I had with 7zip on Windows.

tug0fwar 6y ago

Sandboxie[1] is a really handy tool for running isolated processes on Windows. [2] https://www.sandboxie.com/ https://www.sandboxie.com/

xaduha 6y ago

https://github.com/Fleex255/PolicyPlus https://github.com/Fleex255/PolicyPlus

ziml77 6y ago

I found Directory Opus a couple years ago and I love it as a file manager. One of those tools that I didn't mind paying for. I know there's other 2-pane file managers, but this was my favorite after testing them. https://www.gpsoft.com.au/ https://www.gpsoft.com.au/

DethNinja 6y ago

I literally can’t work without Fences: https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/ https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/ It is an amazing feature, I still can’t believe no major OS includes something similar as default.

sidpatil 6y ago

I like TidyTabs [1] and AquaSnap [2] (both by Nurgo Software). They both make window management so much easier. What I'd prefer is an open-source tiling window manager like i3. I've tried bug.n [3], but couldn't get it to work consistently for some reason. [1] https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/tidytabs https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/tidytabs [2] https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/aquasnap https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/aquasnap [3] https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n

Miner49er 6y ago
I always had problems with bug.n too. The best tool I've found like a tiling wm on Windows is PyleWM: https://github.com/GGLucas/PyleWM https://github.com/GGLucas/PyleWM

segfaultbuserr 6y ago

For day-to-day development, WSL is definitely better. But I think MSYS2 [0] still deserves a mention in the age of Windows Subsystem for Linux. It's a complete mingw-w64 distribution with a friendly package manager (ArchLinux's pacman). If you suddenly need to use some CLI tools on a Windows machine, MSYS2 can be quicker - no need to enable virtualization or upgrade Windows 10, just download a 91 MB installer and you can start right away. I recently needed to use wget on Windows to solve a problem for someone, instead of MSYS2, I made the mistake of downloading a random Windows build at SourceForge, later I was hit by a bug... [0] https://www.msys2.org/ https://www.msys2.org/

mixmastamyk 6y ago
Indeed I still use git bash on a secondary Windows box, lots faster and more functional in a few ways with a VM.

com2kid 6y ago

Switcher, let's you change to a window by typing its name. By far the best utility for navigating open apps.

ayoisaiah 6y ago
Do you mean Switcheroo? That's the one I use
- com2kid 6y ago
  Also a great app! I have switcher on my desktop, switcheroo on my laptop. Both work quite well.

pyrophane 6y ago

Once Windows 10 supports linux GUI apps by default in WSL 2, that will be huge. At that point it should be easy to develop completely in Linux, only on Windows. I've gotten this working with some extra tools, and the experience is pretty good, but it is still a bit too fiddly for me to consider it as a primary solution for everyday development.

kjaftaedi 6y ago
You probably have a solution that works for you, but you could configure vscode to develop against a linux instance in the cloud over ssh. Then you could test the gui apps with xwindow forwarding over ssh. I use putty/xming for this.

_zamorano_ 6y ago

Missing TortoiseGit in that list. Everytime I see someone struggling with Git I wonder why they don't take the easy way.

ayoisaiah 6y ago

My suggestion: O&O ShutUp10 [1] It allows you to control your privacy by deactivating various Windows functions, and you don't even need to install it. [0]: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

elrostelperien 6y ago

Surprised no one suggested AllDup. It's the best tool I've seen for working with duplicates: http://www.alldup.info/en_download_alldup.php http://www.alldup.info/en_download_alldup.php