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…
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.
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.
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…
I think I broke the store while disabling things. Not sure about this time around.
One thing that I considered but never actualized. Suggestions are welcome. PM or write them here.
As some of you may have read on my G’MIC diary thread, I neglected to backup the file that mattered (to this community at least).
I would like to ask for suggestions on backup strategies. Minimalist and current is what I am looking for.
Followup
1 As hinted on my diary, I created user.gmic in a directory outside of %APPDATA% and then hard linked it back to %APPDATA%. (Hard linking is only possible if it is on the volume, so no using my data drive). This directory is then pushed to a repository with verification. I have yet to automate it though. This will be my backup method, at least for that one file.
2 Apparently, there is another simplewall spelled “Simplewall”. I am using
Check Veracrypt. It can do both container encryption and full partition encryption. The advantage of the first is that you can backup the encrypted container somewhere else for some peace of mind.
I can only recommend the traditional 3-2-1 strategy: 3 copies, in at least 2 different media, and 1 of them off-site.
For the “local” backup of all my data I use BackupPC on my home server. Very solid and mostly set and forget. Every two months I make the off-site backup by manually dumping an encrypted archive of the latest backup to a couple of drives that I keep at the office (still looking for relatively cheap and easy options to keep that copy off-city)
For small very important things (think ID copies and other important documents) I also use Deja-dup (Linux only, I think). It makes fully automatic encrypted incremental backups into my Dropbox folder, which then are uploaded to the cloud.
My backup strategy utilizes RAID level 1, where you backup to multiple drives in a mirror configuration. That way, if a drive fails, you can hot-swap it out with a fresh one without disturbing your backup. I have installed a few mission-critical data drives in RAID level 1+0, where you can have a fast, striped RAID that is also mirrored. It is usually a four or six drive ordeal.
I’m not sure what the best linux software for the task is; the machines I keep backed up are Win and Mac. On both I use the built-in backup functionality: Time Machine on mac, plain-ole’ Backup on win.
Time Machine is quite handy. In the menu bar there is an icon you can click and select Enter Time Machine.
Given you have actual backups, this is not meant as criticism, just for emphasis: RAID 1 is not backup. It is good to gain constant availability of your data, even if a disk fails, however it does not protect in a range of scenarios. Always use backups in addition to RAID.
. 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.
Not sure about this time around. 
icon you can click and select Enter Time Machine.
).