7
[not mine, crosspost] Tools I use to make Windows 10 work for me
(programming.dev)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
7 points (100.0% liked)
Deshittification
0 readers
1 users here now
State of affairs for technology seem bad? But what is being done to change it? And what could be done by you so it changes at least for yourself?
A community to talk about the reversal of enshittification, be it news, actions that could be done, etc.
A person that sees no solution has no reason to keep going.
Rules
- Be civil
- If you must talk about enshittification, please include how someone could reverse it; otherwise, post it elsewhere
founded 3 weeks ago
MODERATORS
My use in computer is usually keyboard-centric, so Windows' overdependence on the mouse breaks the workflow a lot for me.
Annoyed for it, I found a tool, WinLaunch, that works like the MacOS Launchpad (according to itself), Ubuntu's launchpad (best part of the OS imo), and Android's app menu:
https://winlaunch.org/
It even supports browsing with the keyboard! And a tip, afaik, no program uses Shift Esc on Windows, so it ends up being a practical key combo to open the pad. =)
Another that imo improves the Windows experiece, though a bit unothordox and if I remember correctly from my tests, is ncdu through WSL.
When the storage is full on Windows, it can be a pain to clean up. But as the Linux tools through WSL can interact with the host system, you can use ncdu's sorting by the folders' total sizes to see what is taking away your storage.
In line of storage management, VisiPics is the best tool I found for finding duplicated images, and it's exclusive to Windows. Not quite refined, but helps a bunch once you get past the learning curve.
Its site seems down, but it's still on Sourceforge:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/visipics/
If you like the command poweroff from Linux for ease to type but not shutdown /s from Windows, you can place a file poweroff.txt in your user folder, put shutdown /s inside, and rename the extension to .bat. Can't remember if there's a more quick way to summon the DOS terminal, but using Win R > type "cmd" > enter > type "po" followed by tab is a very quick way to open the bat file. Also tab in the DOS terminal allows browsing by files that start with what you wrote if there's more than one starting with "po".
Can't remember any more at the time.
Oh, right, another unothordox solution involving comes to mind, though theorethical as I don't have a baremetal Windows 10 or 11 with me to test.
If an older program runs on full screen, it can mess the resolution of the system, be it on Linux or Windows.
Though on Windows there are tools specifically for running full screen programs windowed, Wine through WSL could help too with its virtual desktop flag, while also tackling another of Windows' problems, its backwards compatibility is spotty at best, specially the older a program is.
The command is:
wine explorer /desktop=some_name,window_size /path/to/executable.exe"some_name" can be anything, and "window_size" is the size of the virtual desktop and ideally should be the same as the size of the fullscreen program.
Example:
wine explorer /desktop=MyDesktop,800x600 Game.exeAnother thing, LibreOffice Calc is much, much lighter than Excel. And I say that despite using both the 2010 or 2016 versions of Excel, depending on the Windows edition I need to use, and having tested LibreOffice Calc on Windows.
From my experience, the more stuff you put on an Excel sheet, the more of a memory hog it becomes. But if you save the sheet and then open it on LibreOffice Calc, suddenly it becomes perfectly browsable, and it takes much longer to have LibreOffice be a memory hog too.