If it comes down to FOSS/freeware stuff I am actually quite fond of Windows ecosystem.
Foobar2k, Paint.NET, Notepad++, IrfanView, WizTree, Ditto, TotalCommander, NAPS2 etc.
Linux has many options for any of those, but I always had a feeling that those options have less polish, or are less stable, or their UI is an afterthought etc. On Windows you have basically a single option for each application that most people go for, so documentation and online help is plentiful.
Without those, especially last one my productivity at my corporate work would be half at most. Editing a file in an archive within another archive directly, doing quick file comparisons of 2 files, syncing different dirs, fulltext recursive search... all with much better UI than Unix console counterparts (which I use too). And much more.
Simply the best tools on the whole market for me in given category, period.
MPD, Krita, Vim/Emacs/Scite,NSxiv with scripts, any diff tool since the 90's, any file manager since Midnight Commander and so on...
Less stable? MPD supported damn state supported popular science radio streaming channels in Spain like nothing...
Also vidir, entr and jimtcl/awk scripts p0wn your setup any time...
I can just remote-mount FS's anywhere and use any local tools as if they where there. I can just spawn builds on directory changes and spawn an editor with a REPL in miliseconds. GUI? Everything it's composable.
I can use a mega-complete GUI for MPD that makes Foobar2k blush. I can output audio to an streaming socket (or to plain Icecast) from MPD and plug any audio FX' and whatnot with MPD plugins.
I can push the whole graphical environment down and I could keep playing my music and control the whole music daemon from my phone.
Add songs, add radio stream, play/skip, volume up and down... from
my damn bathroom.
And OFC I can still code under VTY's and even read PDF's/CBZ's/EPUB's and even watch videos play any game or emulator which uses SDL (a ton of source ports, emulators like mednafen, Doom/Quake ports, Scummvm, DOSBox, PCSXR, PPSPPP)...
That without touching a mouse or switching between GUI's. No RSI, no headaches, no remote GUI tools to mount any crap requiring thousands of click and hurting your wrists and forearms. Everything it's under a directory and managed as it if were part of my hard disk filesystem.
I can edit directory listings with my text editor with the vidir tool, they will show up as a text file. You delete a range of lines, these files are gone. I can search and rename files at crazy speeds and, well, I can spawn any tool with find and iomenu and have a quick search for a file. File managers? Forget it, you keep typing and the fuzzy-finding tool with match the file in milseconds and open the registered tool for that extensions.
And this is done with tools that could probably run in the 80's and early 90's. Go figure, I'm computing as if it was in 2040 but with 'prehistoric' tools.
Ah, don't forget that most CLI and TUI tools are scriptable... so you can just forget of even using a computer, 90% of the tasks can complete themselves via cron, the time scheduler under Unix.
Yes.
The two applications i miss on my linux boxes are notepad++ (though Kate is a good substitute) and GitExtensions
Notepad++ works pretty well with Wine, too.
https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext for a reimplementation
Ye about the only app I miss on my Debian systems.
Yes, happy user and donations contributor over here.
> donations contributor
A.k.a. donor.
Yeah, thanks.
yeah, and it's still one of things in Windows that is a pleasure to use when you need it.
If it comes down to FOSS/freeware stuff I am actually quite fond of Windows ecosystem.
Foobar2k, Paint.NET, Notepad++, IrfanView, WizTree, Ditto, TotalCommander, NAPS2 etc.
Linux has many options for any of those, but I always had a feeling that those options have less polish, or are less stable, or their UI is an afterthought etc. On Windows you have basically a single option for each application that most people go for, so documentation and online help is plentiful.
> Foobar2k, Notepad++, IrfanView, TotalCommander
Without those, especially last one my productivity at my corporate work would be half at most. Editing a file in an archive within another archive directly, doing quick file comparisons of 2 files, syncing different dirs, fulltext recursive search... all with much better UI than Unix console counterparts (which I use too). And much more.
Simply the best tools on the whole market for me in given category, period.
1 reply →
MPD, Krita, Vim/Emacs/Scite,NSxiv with scripts, any diff tool since the 90's, any file manager since Midnight Commander and so on...
Less stable? MPD supported damn state supported popular science radio streaming channels in Spain like nothing...
Also vidir, entr and jimtcl/awk scripts p0wn your setup any time... I can just remote-mount FS's anywhere and use any local tools as if they where there. I can just spawn builds on directory changes and spawn an editor with a REPL in miliseconds. GUI? Everything it's composable. I can use a mega-complete GUI for MPD that makes Foobar2k blush. I can output audio to an streaming socket (or to plain Icecast) from MPD and plug any audio FX' and whatnot with MPD plugins.
I can push the whole graphical environment down and I could keep playing my music and control the whole music daemon from my phone. Add songs, add radio stream, play/skip, volume up and down... from my damn bathroom.
And OFC I can still code under VTY's and even read PDF's/CBZ's/EPUB's and even watch videos play any game or emulator which uses SDL (a ton of source ports, emulators like mednafen, Doom/Quake ports, Scummvm, DOSBox, PCSXR, PPSPPP)...
That without touching a mouse or switching between GUI's. No RSI, no headaches, no remote GUI tools to mount any crap requiring thousands of click and hurting your wrists and forearms. Everything it's under a directory and managed as it if were part of my hard disk filesystem.
I can edit directory listings with my text editor with the vidir tool, they will show up as a text file. You delete a range of lines, these files are gone. I can search and rename files at crazy speeds and, well, I can spawn any tool with find and iomenu and have a quick search for a file. File managers? Forget it, you keep typing and the fuzzy-finding tool with match the file in milseconds and open the registered tool for that extensions. And this is done with tools that could probably run in the 80's and early 90's. Go figure, I'm computing as if it was in 2040 but with 'prehistoric' tools.
Ah, don't forget that most CLI and TUI tools are scriptable... so you can just forget of even using a computer, 90% of the tasks can complete themselves via cron, the time scheduler under Unix.