I use TinyWall, but I can’t tell if it will fulfill your needs.
And don’t forget an antivirus. I use Avast Free. It’s nice if you don’t mind some nag windows from time to time.
Oh, and if you’re a bit paranoid, then something like Malwarebytes is a must.
Probably unpopular opinion: Don’t get antivirus. Get a decent virus scanner if you want to periodically check for malware, but do not install an antivirus service. These present an additional attack surface and often acquire high privileges and working at a low system level, so a compromise is even worse. if you behave sensibly (securly), i.e. don’t install unknown software or from unknown sources, don’t download anything from untrusted sources and keep your system and software up-to-date, you don’t need an antivirus. Of course if you know that your users simply don’t care (I remember cleaning up browser toolbars every other month in my family 
), then an antivirus might do more good than harm (but I’ll wager they’ll get your computer infected anyway). With a mildly security sensitive user it doesn’t.
And don’t get me started on resource hogging and false positives (that don’t get taken care of for ages despite multiple user reports).
Well, that’s probably because I’m a bit on the paranoid side, and my computer doesn’t complain much about having another service running. You’re right anyway, and the best antivirus is yourself, if you know what you’re doing and what to avoid doing.
Yes, it would seem the most prevalent attacks come from information compromised by enterprises with which you’ve established credentials. And that’s hard to manage when some of these enterprises are important to getting through your day…
Since anitvirus was mentioned by @XavAL and @rasimo, I figured I’d mention that I use Immunet for the limited times I have to use Windows. Those occasions that I find myself using Windows is to update firmware on my Nikons and Pocketwizard triggers and probably some other things I’m forgetting. But anyway, I’ve never had any troubles while using Immunet for my admittedly ultra restricted use of Windows.
Still true now. But it gives you access to a whole host of things that you can use from the command line in Linux.
I will stick with simplewall, whose source is on GitHub.
Unsure whether it is unpopular with so many tech enthusiasts here. I tend to agree.
Direction and question
I am thinking of going the hosts file route and keeping simplewall. If you have hosts and block list recommendations, please let me know. On Github, I see that GitHub - StevenBlack/hosts: 🔒 Consolidating and extending hosts files from several well-curated sources. Optionally pick extensions for porn, social media, and other categories. has the most stars, besides two Chinese language repositories, which I doubt have what I am looking for. (They have something to do with “Google hosts” and “Telegram”, guessing have to do with preventing persecution from governments.)
Something I cannot live without in windows is Cygwin. This is mostly so I can have a sensible shell and access to common *nix tools in that shell. I use it often enough that I almost always have a bash terminal fire up immediately on login. I find this helps minimize my cognitive load switching to my personal machines (ubuntu usually) to my work laptop (win10+Cygwin).
The rest you’ve all already covered. Does anyone use something like Chocolatey for package management on windows? I should take a look myself at some point…
I use MSYS2 bash the same way. Just can’t warm up to CMD or PowerShell…
Fully agree. Windows 10 comes with very good malware protection included. I had Avira before, all removed now and use MS Defender only.
Apps that don’t appear to have been mentioned yet:
TeraCopy
Shutter Encoder
Sublime Text
SumatraPDF
VLC Player
Deluge
and then I’ll second these apps:
Firefox (+ UBlock Origins, Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere)
Filezilla
7zip
VPN
emacs! Emacs has eshell, which will give you all the basic Unix utils on any platform
Just had a fresh install this weekend. My important things are:
Office 365
Terracopy
RaiDrive
VPN
Affinity photo and designer
Darktable
GIMP
Xoro PDF Reader
Microsoft Terminal (really very good)
WSL (2)
VS Code ( besides some big projects I use it for everything)
Joplin Notes
Everything
EarTrumpet (Control volume and Output device of individual apps)
ShareX Screenshots
Powertoys (Fancy Zones is fantastic)
NightOwl (like caffeine for mac)
Handbrake
Macrium Reflect Backup
Git
Fork (Git GUI)
Ubuntu&ZSH in WSL
Not anymore. Had a fresh install. No usb drive, took 20 minutes, 2 reboots and everything was working.
After that update to 20h1 /2004 RC, which took about one hour. The update situation has improved very much. TBH, using win 10, macOS and some manjaro/ Ubuntu, the Windows 10 overall experience is now the best of all the OSes for me.
One I forgot to mention before: a password safe.
I do miss the power sometimes. I will consider it. However, the reason I am not using Linux is I don’t want a huge time sink. To put it mildly, I tend to go overboard.
I overlooked your last recommendation. Let me know how this one goes.
I enjoy the look and feel.
Same as my comment on Linux. Afraid of going overboard, or entering the fray.
Wow, that is a long list! I haven’t even linked all of the portable apps from my data drive yet! Remarks:
Office Yes, but I will mostly use LibreOffice.
MS Terminal Couldn’t install it last time. Might give it another attempt.
WSL Current order of preference: Cygwin, MSYS2, WSL.
Everything One of the first portable apps I linked.
MS has gone a long roundabout way. I still have to disable everything insensible.
How else would I remember my login for this forum?
Firefox has that too but I didn’t want to do that. I don’t miss most of the bookmarks. There were too many. I still have the Firefox bookmarks on my phone, so I could import those if I need them, thankfully.
Yep. I like Bitwarden now, but 1password was also nice
I always the find the windows version of libreoffice to be slow and laggy. Not comparable to the Linux version. And I only need office for collaboration work and office 365 with OneDrive really works nicely
The terminal must have been one of the first previews, which was really hard to install. Now it can be downloaded and auto-updated via the store.
I never really gotten into Cygwin, but msys2 just works. But using wsl2 and Ubuntu and the vs code remote extension is just amazing. But i still use both
Maybe try pinboard.in
A paid service, but worth the money and the support for the developer
I haven’t said it’s perfect 
. But It gives me a good usable system in a short time. macOS on the other Hand takes a lot of additional settings and Tools to really become enjoyable.
I agree that one should use a password safe. I disagree, that one needs to install it after a fresh install of OS. My password safe is on an encrypted USB-Stick for double security. So I need to know only two passwords. Of course having a backup of the USB-Stick is needed as well…