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PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

fourth-wall.co.uk

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Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#151

Post by bladegash »

adam_arthur wrote: post #108
Zardoz84 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply try a native Linux install. You will find far better that "our way or the highway" behavior of Windows and OSX .

You get "native" linux on Windows with WSL. It's a linux container, but with nice integrations out of the box re: networking etc. I'm not against running linux alone per se, but to me being able to run both Windows (with better app support, polish), and Linux at the same time is kind of the best of both worlds. Windows feels nicer as a daily driver, and can do all dev work directly in a linux environment

I am a big fan of WSL and used it extensively for a while across multiple development environments. Also like using Windows a lot and feel more productive on it than Unix based systems.

However, I started to run into a lot of issues with the file systems being a bit too commingled though, especially when using things like VSCode’s WSL integrations where you’re regularly reading/writing to the Linux file system from Windows (or vice versa).

I guess I mention this to say that I ended up putting Ubuntu on a Hyper V VM and it was a huge improvement. If you enjoy WSL, but need something a bit less integrated, I highly recommend it. Using VSCode’s remote container/host extensions work just as well (if not better for things like Docker).

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#152

Post by kevingadd »

Timothycquinn wrote: post #131

A great OS Utility is Path Copy Copy ( https://pathcopycopy.github.io/ )

FYI, if you shift-right-click files in explorer there is a 'copy as path' option (why this is hidden by default is mysterious to me). Not nearly as useful as that utility, but good to have if you can't install extensions!

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#153

Post by cshokie »

coderintherye wrote: post #135

Since I so rarely see a Windows thread, perhaps folks wont mind me asking: What utilities or code would you leverage if you had a use case to run a program on a Windows machine once a day and look for any CSV/XLS/XLSX files and then copy those to another server? (With full knowledge of the owner of said computer, they are just lacking in proficiency to do anything even as simple as connect Box Sync)

The Windows Task Scheduler is probably the way to go. You can create tasks that run on a variety of schedules or events. They can run a script that does what you need.

There is a PowerShell module for managing scheduled tasks. It should be possible to write a script that will create the appropriate scheduled tasks on behalf of the non-proficient user. They just need to run the PowerShell script once to get things going.

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#154

Post by kevingadd »

com2kid wrote: post #60
transcriptase wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead we get “Paint 3D”, “Mixed Reality Portal”, and “Your Phone”. Absolute essentials that I’m certain are chart-toppers in the telemetry activity charts.

I'd guess Your Phone is a direct response to iMessage on MacOS. It'd be more useful if it worked with any messaging app that was running on my phone though!

It at least used to work with LINE and Discord for me, but I gave up on using it because it's so damn buggy and the Windows side of it uses like 4GB of RAM. And both of those have native desktop clients I can use instead.

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#155

Post by legalcorrection »

nrabulinski wrote: post #134
NoahKAndrews wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a small amount of fairness, Windows only comes with one console. On Windows 10, you have to install Windows Terminal separately, and on Windows 11, Windows Terminal is the only one.

Windows 10 comes with cmd.exe and power shell, both include their own terminal emulators. Windows 11 comes with both and with windows terminal on top of it.

No, that's not right. conhost.exe is the old terminal emulator and Windows Terminal is the new one. cmd.exe and powershell are analogous to bash/zsh/etc. and can run inside either conhost.exe or Windows Terminal.

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#156

Post by vetinari »

nrabulinski wrote: post #134
NoahKAndrews wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a small amount of fairness, Windows only comes with one console. On Windows 10, you have to install Windows Terminal separately, and on Windows 11, Windows Terminal is the only one.

Windows 10 comes with cmd.exe and power shell, both include their own terminal emulators. Windows 11 comes with both and with windows terminal on top of it.

cmd.exe and powershell do not include "terminal emulators". Pre-Windows Terminal, they (and every other console app) use conhost.exe, that comes with the system. Windows Terminal comes with openconsole.exe, that any app can use instead. In Windows 11, it can be set up as the default one.

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#158

Post by dtgriscom »

frankjr wrote: post #82
doomlaser wrote: post #36

This reminds me of one of my favorite features from the Mac: Quick Look — press space to instantly bring up a big contextual preview window of the selected document in the Finder. You can bring it to Windows with this useful open source tool: https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook

I use this all the time. While the preview window is open, you can even use keyboard arrows to move to other files (or just select them with mouse) and the preview gets updated.

You can also:

- Command-Delete to delete the current file

- Return, type a new name, and return, to rename the current file

In both cases the view will properly update.

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#160

Post by haswell »

adam_arthur wrote: post #106
haswell wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that window management is poor in vanilla macOS. But fixing this just involves choosing a single tool, e.g. Moom, Magnet, etc. Out of curiosity, what other tools do you use? I do find this a bit annoying, but on the other hand, it gives me some flexibility to choose the style of window management I prefer through choice of utility.

The real question is why has Apple not implemented snapping behavior after ~10 years of it being in windows? But yeah, you can achieve something similar with tooling for sure.

That’s a completely fair question, I’m just curious why the parent comment required a bunch of tools.
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