Okay, so I hate working in Windows, but on my employer’s equipment at least, I must live with it. After having had this machine replaced twice (faulty Dell hardware) and rebuilt more times than I can remember (Windows BSODs), for a total of at least 3 system migrations this past year, I thought I’d better keep a list of what free software to install on top of Windows, and what adjustments to make, so that at least I don’t feel like I’m wearing a straight jacket. Here goes:
Useability
Fix the keyboard to Dvorak (following is for Windows XP — this will likely change for Vista… it shouldn’t be this complicated!)
- Open Control Panel: START > Control Panel
- Choose “Regional and Language Options” (why not Keyboard???)
- Select “Languages” tab, press Details… button (sigh)
- In the “Installed services” section, select “Keyboard“, then press “Add…” to add a new keyboard layout
- Find US-Dvorak in the list
- In the “Default input language” section, set the default language to English (Australia) – United States-Dvorak
- In the “Preferences” section, press “Language Bar…” button
- Make sure that “Show the language bar on the desktop” is turned on, to make it easier to switch to QWERTY if needed
- Back in “Preferences“, press the “Key Settings…” button
- Turn off all the language Hot keys
To get rid of that horrible, garish blue/green stock XP theme, I use the Zune theme from Microsoft. It sucks less (the theme, that is, not the MP3 player, that sucks more than iPod).
Make Explorer a bit useable. Actually Explorer is total crap, and I’m still searching for a replacement. I like MidnightCommander in Cygwin (mc
), and Konqueror in KDE. But for Windows, there aren’t a lot of free Explorer replacements, except maybe Windows File Explorer. Anyway, follow these steps to have Explorer at least be not so stupid:
- Open an Explorer window (anywhere)
- Select “Tools > Folder Options…“, “General” tab
- Make sure that under “Browse folders“, the option is to “Open each folder in the same window” (Explorer doesn’t do multi-windows like Macintosh Finder: it screws them up)
- In “Click items as follows“, turn on “Single-click to open“, and “Underline icons only when I point at them“
- Select the “View” tab
- Turn on the following:
- “Display the full path in the address bar”
- “Display the full path in the title bar”
- “Do not cache thumbnails”
- “Show hidden files and folders”
- “Show both parts and manage them individually” (for web pages and folders)
- “Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color”
- Turn off the following:
- “Hide extensions for known file types”
- “Launch folder windows in a separate process”
- “Remember each folder’sview settings”
- Press the “Apply“, then “Apply to All Folders” buttons
- Press “OK“
Programs
Install these programs at a minimum:
- Firefox (essential add-ons: del.icio.us, DownThemAll, English (AU) Dictionary, Flashblock, ImageZoom, QuickProxy, Foxmarks, GSpace)
- Launchy
- Windows File Explorer (a free, sort-of orthodox file manager for Windows)
- Virtual Dimension (Virtual desktop support for Windows)
- No Machine‘s NX Client for Windows (so I can connect a high speed X session to my home machine)
- OpenOffice.org (also use JustLocal‘s dictionary / thesaurus files to get spell check working)
- Cygwin (include the X11 modules, Emacs [make sure to select ver 22], pdksh, subversion, python, clisp, fortune, mc, ssh, units, etc….)
- Java SE DevKit
- Subversion for Windows (version control)
- NetBeans (6.0 or greater has everything I need)
- Audacity audio editor and encoder
- VideoLAN Client movie player
- Illiminable DirectShow filters for OGG Vorbis (to play .OGG files in Windows Media Player)
- MODPlug (because sometimes a good MOD fits my mood)
- GIMP image editor
- IrfanView image viewer
Emacs
Once Cygwin and Emacs are installed, I need to add my dotfiles (from backup), and also install these emacs add-ons:
CEDET and JDEE might be more trouble than they’re worth, especially since I’m installing NetBeans anyway. They seem cool (especially the enhanced speedbar), but they’re not exactly plug-and-play. Jury’s still out.
Thanks for the tips. I love Launchy and the Zune theme.
sinewalker wrote:
> But for Windows, there aren’t a lot of free Explorer
> replacements
I like xplorer2 Lite, which is free as in beer.
http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm
Josh: thanks for the pointer.
Unfortunately, xplorer2 and the lite version are only free for private or academic use. If I were to install either of these on my employer’s machine, it would be for commercial use.
Xplorer2 looks like a neat program, and I’ve played with it in the past. It’s probably worth the price, if I wasn’t such a cheap-skate. Although being a dad, I’d have to think carefully about spending US$29.95 (= about AU$35) when there are free (speech or beer) programs that I can legally install in a commercial environment 😉
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