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Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

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Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#121

Post by GordonS »

jimbob45 wrote: post #12
rkagerer wrote: post #9

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 fou…

Shout-out to TortoiseDiff over WinMerge/BC3. I routinely get my best results with it because of its superior usability (and it’s free!).

Is TortoiseDiff available standalone, or does it only come with/as part of TortoiseSVN?

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#122

Post by wayneftw »

contradictioned wrote: post #110

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...).

You can change the context menu to default to `.zip` instead of `.7z`.

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#123

Post by dblohm7 »

bsenftner wrote: post #96

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.

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

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#124

Post by wayneftw »

eknkc wrote: post #57
trm42 wrote: post #55

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?

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 bu…

I actually switched to XFCE a couple years ago because I think it's a much better desktop environment than Windows with regards to activities that I do for work like running lots of Docker images.

XFCE has features that you need 7+ Taskbar Tweaker for on Windows, like being able to middle-click a taskbar button to close it's window. Any feature XFCE didn't have such as "move a window to another monitor with a hotkey" were easy to script with xdotools or other similar utilities. With the recent release of XFCE (4.16 I think?) we got fractional scaling as well.

I also found it easier to add custom commands to Thunar's context menu than Windows Explorer. Thunar also has tabs and so does the XFCE terminal emulator.

Beyond that, I'm no longer constantly fighting with Windows Updates, Windows Firewall or Windows Defender or navigating the fragmented landscape of shells (PowerShell, Cmd, Git-Bash, Cygwin, etc.) just to get my job done.

When I setup a Linux workstation (Manjaro is my preferred distro), it stays the way I configured it without Microsoft constantly changing things out from under me - so I feel like I actually own the system.

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#125

Post by oxfeed65261 »

alexis2b wrote: post #18

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.

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.

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#126

Post by oxfeed65261 »

rkagerer wrote: post #9

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 fou…

I enjoy lists like this, so I, for one, would love to see yours.

+1 for Beyond Compare. Fantastic tool. Outstanding support from Scooter Software.

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#127

Post by etlandis »

jaharios wrote: post #50

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/

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

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#128

Post by etlandis »

agustif wrote: post #99
giu wrote: post #83

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…

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...

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

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#130

Post by yardshop »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #53

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…

The AutoHotKey programming language is quirky and weird, even when compared to Powershell's quirkiness, but there are classes of things that AutoHotKey can do that I don't know how you would do on Powershell:

    prepend or append selected text to what's already on the clipboard with Ctrl+[ or Ctrl+]

    find all windows with specific text in the title and resize them in a custom way (Window+])

    insert custom strings or large blocks of text in other programs triggered by a keypress (its original reason for being)
    eg: ]s inserts the current date and time: 2020-12-25 11:57:07

    define a keypress to start Putty with a given profile, enter logon credentials, CD to a folder and start Midnight Commander
(these are my own keypress definitions)

I once wrote an AHK script to start VLC streaming a local radio station at a specific time, then start Audacity to record audio, then stop the recording and streaming at the end of the program and save the audio as WAV and MP3. This let me go for a bike ride in the late afternoon before dark, then come home and listen to my favorite radio show later in the evening. It's not necessary anymore, but back in 2008 this was an amazing thing to put together.

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