Summary of SoCraTes 2016 Session "Hey dude, where is my tool chain?" - Working on Windows as a Linux

This year on the conference SoCraTes I hosted a session for the first time. It was about working on a Windows system from the perspective of a Linux user.  A big thank to @ndrssmn, who motivated to host this session.

@yooogan was so nice to summarize the session in the SoCraTes wiki (big thank for that).  But the wiki page is only accessible for SoCraTes participants, so we decided that I republish it on my blog. Enjoy it.

Console/Shell

  • Babun - Based on Cygwin, includes a CLI package manager (pact - like apt, yum, …) and preconfigured oh-my-zsh as shell
  • ConEmu - feature rich console emulator with tabs
  • Console2 (original)/(modified fork) - console emulator, multi tabs, configurable mouse behavior
  • PuTTY - ssh client (when you don't have Babun/Cygwin anyway)

File Management

Text Editors

  • Notepad++ - all-purpose editor, syntax highlighting, file monitoring (tail -f)
  • Atom - editor; same settings in all your environments

Diff/Merge

Searching

Viewers

Documentation

  • Zim - Organize notes, saves to plain text
  • Greenshot - Screenshots, including obfuscation / comments, for documentation, connects to JIRA
  • yEd - multi-platform (Win/Linux/MacOS) graph editor, extensible palette, useful pictograms
  • Paint.NET - free image editor
  • GIMP - Swiss army knife for images

System

Disk Usage

  • RidNacs - graphical du
  • WinDirStat - even more colorful graphical du
  • ncdu - CLI, can be installed from Cygwin/Babun

Keyboard

  • WinCompose - a (X.org/X11 like) compose key for Windows - type äöë߀«»←↑↓→¡☺♥… like a boss!
  • SharpKeys - remap keyboard: CapsLockCtrl, ~Esc, etc.
  • AutoHotkey - very sophisticated keyboard macros / automation - full-fledged scripting language

Clipboard

  • PureText - remove formatting from pasted text
  • Ditto - clipboard manager

Pictures (taken from Twitter):

Let's talk about Windows, pt. 1
Let's talk about Windows, pt. 1
Let's talk about Windows, pt. 2
Let's talk about Windows, pt. 2
Let's talk about Windows, pt. 3
Let's talk about Windows, pt. 3