Windows is getting ready for my desktop
Filed under #tools and #observations
Update: made quite a few edits, footnotes/references should align now.
Scott Hanselmann writes: Introducing open source Windows 10 PowerToys.
With playful reference to https://blog.enoch.kim/the-year-of-the-linux-desktop-is-further-away-than-ever-before which I enjoyed reading and which seems to be a mostly true description of the state of the art:
The Year of the Linux Desktop is Further Away Than Ever Before
An incredibly long diatribe of my struggles moving back to Linux
Especially the part about making a bootable usb stick is relatable to me: when I am happy with my setup I leave it alone and work so until recently the last I installed Linux was sometime back in 2016 or so. Trying to install Linux this year has been a pain until I realized balena etcher is the only tool that works reliably now. After that however I haven't had many of the problems mentioned – but that is only because I know better and usually go straight for the worlds best desktop environment[0][1] instead of trying to make Gnome usable for me ;–)
Personally however I mostly use Linux except when customers demand I use Windows. Using Windows mostly isn't a problem at all, except for testing my patience, but my patience kind of depends on the situation, and if somebody pays me to send 50% longer time waiting for builds I'm fine with that[2].
[0]: The best distro I found is availble here: https://neon.kde.org/
[1]: Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes I think rationality is as well. I even know smart, extremely productive programmers, way better than me who use Mac, but if I didn't I wouldn't believe it, at least not right away.
[2]: But if you are a programmer and don't ever get annoyed by waiting for your computer then maybe one or more of you, your employer and/or customers could maybe[3] benefit if you studied “Three great virtues of a programmer” (quoted from Larry Wall himself in his “Programming Perl”, 2nd edition according to that site).
[3]: Alternatively if you program in a mainstream language and everything is super smooth you should feel free to make a blog post about your setup and tell me about it, contact details in the pinned about page, probably visible as a link on top of this page.