Ask HN: Must do's and must know's when switching to Windows?

I am switching to Windows from Linux (and MacOS on my last work laptop). It used to be my main OS years ago, and I think the time has come for another try. I know I won't be especially happy with it, just like I am not especially happy with Mac and Linux, so I am looking for anything that can make the experience more pleasant.

Install cygwin.

Tried this recently as an exercise in broadening my horizons.

- Expect not to be able to SSH into your machine, for example when you really need to remotely make that git push you forgot before you left work.

- Expect either a very slow unix emulation through Cygwin, or a very glitchy one through the new Ubuntu subsystem for Windows.

- Expect installing software to be a royal PITA, and expect to start trusting binary blobs from random vendors because that's just how software is delivered on Windows. Expect every single piece of software to have its own update system, each of which will notify you separately when updates are available and have their own varying degrees of reliability in performing the update.

- On Windows 10 you can not permanently install unsigned drivers even if you really, really want to. The closest you can get is booting up in a one time development mode which is disabled the next time you reboot, or enabling a test mode which watermarks your screen. Very annoying if you have esoteric or bespoke hardware, and I don't like being told what I can and can't do on my own system.

Other than that, my major issues - common to Windows and every linux DE I've tried - were with running on my MacBook with retina (high DPI) display. It's a 1/3 chance for a given piece of software whether it will gracefully support the higher pixel density, will display as a tiny window with unreadable text, or a combination of both. Lack of smooth zoom and scrolling with the trackpad was also annoying, though not a showstopper.

If you are a programmer, then I will suggest a few do's:

- Install git bash for command line.

- Install ConEmu: a windows console emulator [0]. This takes console to next level on windows. I highly recommend it.

[0] https://conemu.github.io/

Installing WSL and learning PowerShell properly are much better alternatives to the above.