No, it doesn’t make Windows behave like Linux.
It are just a collection of apps made by the engineers behind Windows with features that never made it into the official build because of all kinds of reasons.
Powertoys on windows are a boon, but there’s absolutely no word you can say they make windows “behave like linux”. Not even close.
The fact that Microsoft refers to the application suite that makes Windows marginally useful as “toys” should tell you everything you need to know about their OS philosophy. I prefer an OS that takes my use cases seriously.
Holy shit powertotys run is the one of the only reasons i can tolerate windows 11 on a works laptop.
Local admin to go digging through group policy settings, just so i don’t have to scroll past 2 pages of ads and internet results in the start menu to open fucking “settings”?
They can absolutely fuck right off with that.
What does it do?
it’s an alt-space launcher.
you press alt+space, a little box pops up in the centre of the screen and works the way the search box in the start menu is supposed to work.
No ads, no internet search results, just application and file search, perhaps some cheeky addition or multiplication.
Thanks, that sounds like something that should definitely be a default option in an OS.
I remember I used rocketdock way back in the day. It gave windows sort of a mac style dock. At some point I also used something called launchy I think.
What’s the second one? PowerToys and?
It’s WSL, I think the logo is relatively new though or maybe not official idk
Interesting, didn’t know WSL had a logo. Thank you!
I suppose it’s official, as it’s also on the Wikipedia page on WSL.
Ooh, thanks for pointing that out. The image was uploaded in November 2021 so it’s older than I realised
Proud victim of the Powertoys to Linux pipeline reporting in
Holy shit! It’s real
Windows - > Powertoys - > Winget - > Win Debloater - > Minimal Windows - > Bazite - > Debian
Pretty much my desktop experience, with popos rather than bazzite.
I completely forgot that I went to PopOS before Bazzite.
I still like it but I was tinkering too much with it before I knew how to stay out of trouble.
It’s so beautiful!
That’s my journey too, except a few of those didn’t exist yet, when I first walked it.
Portable Windows apps and Ubuntu live Boot CDs awkwardly bridges some of the (previous) gaps, for me.
You forgot the arch/Gentoo phase before Debian.
wait til you hear about WSL
until you realise it’s just a Microsoft-flavored VM
only the second version. wsl1 is pure black magic. the communication layer is 9P, which means that windows is currently the only mainstream OS capable of talking to a Plan9 network out of the box.
this is really cool, is it still possible to run the first version on current win10?
i think so. it has much better inter-filesystem transfer performance than wsl2, but worse compatibility. so they keep it around for people who need the performance.
Oh cool, TIL. And I think this knowledge is niche enough such that
n < 10,000lolWait what? x)
Do you have a link where I could read more?
the design section of the Wikipedia article is a good start
i think that’s oversimplifying, but kinda…
good bot
Ha, bleep bloop
Oh, yes all the tools that should already exist in their crappy, uninnovated OS.
They still haven’t figured out how to do updates without installing during a reboot.
Something Linux has been doing since the 90’s
Sometimes those updates only apply when you reboot.
yes. And then it’s literally just a… reboot.
You don’t sit there waiting for it to install. It’s just restarting the kernel so the newly-installed version takes over. (and generally it only applies to the kernel updates.)
Fedora does the windows update style updates now a lot of the time.
You can turn that off and apply patched live, if you prefer. It’s just a toggle.
Technically rebooting and installing updates is “safer” but I’ve never had an update applied to a running system fail catastrophically, because unlike Windows, operating system components are compartmentalized. As such, restarting most system components causes no issues with functionality for everything else.
No true. I use it only for FancyZones. A feature not native to Linux. In gnome I also have to install a plugin to get this functionality.
I’m thankful for both.
The plugin install on Gnome is quicker and less invasive (doesn’t require escalated permissions) than installing PowerToys.
I also like that Gnome plugins let me choose only the plugins I want. PowerToys leaves me with many installed features I’m not using. I think they at least all default to turned off. Gnome does save me a few moments of configuration, too, as the plugin can default to “on” since each plugin is separate.
And Gnome’s tiling has good defaults. PowerToys still uses “these are power users” as an excuse to ignore usability feedback.
Gnome plugin are great. I’ve seen complaints about them breaking when gnome is upgraded, but I haven’t experienced any problems myself.
My only complaint is discoverability. I was rawdogging gnome in fedora for a while before i discovered the extension manager app in the Store. This should be built in!
All fun and games but I’m still missing the “paste without format” keybind.
Powertoys is a great addition and while there probably are addons for all of these in linux I kinda wish they would come in one package together too.
Maybe it’s just me but I feel like I’m not helping my system by tagging on add on after add on just to get back some basic functionality from Window like a clipboard and status indicators for some apps in my taskbar
You are not a Plasma user it seems.
Nope Gome 48 on Fedora 42
Well, you fell on the sad trap of the “default flavour” of many distros.
I think GNOME only has that presence because… It’s american. Otherwise… No one can beat the possibilities and features of KDE Plasma. Truly a complete desktop, so good you could downgrade it to work like GNOME if you wanted.
Gnome at this point is just as bad as Microsoft and Apple.
It’s there way, or so help them God they WILL make you do it their way.
Does ctrl-shift-v not work for you? Or do you want to rebind it?
I did not know that was a think until now but yes I want to rebind it 🙈 I will need to look into this for gnome
KDE plasma has like 90% of the feadures.
I think I will need to go over to KDE anyways soon
I kinda wish they would come in one package together too.
You may be able to find themed meta packages (single packages that install a suite of related features) for this, depending what you’re looking for.
Lately, I have been confused because I was looking for Gnome add-ons for features that vwere already included but just toggled off.
I now find that most of what I want, as a power user, is a quick settings search and then a toggle button.
The general dividng line, lately, in Gnome, is that plugins may still have bugs, while built-in features tend to be very reliable. Most of what PowerToys contains (that I care about) is just a settings toggle in Gnome. A notable exception is Window tiling, which I use a plugin for.
I will go through the list of power tools and see what I can get from Gnome settings 🤔
I miss the window tiling one. Its ability to span multiple “areas” with a window by holding a modifier key is something I sorely wish KDE’s tiling had.
Edit: FancyZones! Finally remembered the name.
Thought KDE did have one? Unless I installed an extension and forgot about it.
Super + T to configure
And works with Super + left click to move windows (no more hunting that pesky titlebar up top)
Edit: I’m on KDE 5 so things may be different, but I found it under Workspace Behaviour>Desktop Effects>Window Management
Yeah this is inbuilt (not an extension) and very similar to Windows fancy zones.
Meta as in Super?
You’re right! Got my names mixed up, still dealing with Windows brainrot
Sorry, wasn’t ment to be a correction. Was making sure I was on the same page.
No apology necessary C: you helped improve the clarity of my initial comment, so thank-you!
Or playing in the same key as the rest of the band……
It does, but in Plasma you can only snap a window to a single area. With FancyZones you can create a more detailed grid and hold a modifier key to make the window span multiple areas, so it’s much more flexible than the fixed layout of KDE. For example you can make a 4x4 grid and choose to span a window across 4x1 or 1x4. That’s impossible in Plasma (for now).
Yea that’s my bad, misread your post. Hopefully some kind soul implements that soon!
Out of curiosity, what keeps you on Plasma versus a tiling WM? Been looking at them but not sure if it’s for me.
I just can’t get into them… I like being able to tile windows when I want to, but I find them too complicated to use. I like how Plasma already contains everything I need and I never have any problems with it. Personally I find the best implementation of tiling is in PopOS where you use a shortcut to activate and deactivate it. It’s really the best of both worlds!
interesting, I’ll have to check it out. Thanks
they talked about a specific functionality and they specifically said they wish kde’s tiling had it. i can’t check whether it does but the commenter clearly isn’t unaware of the zones, they just want different functionality.
ah good catch, I missed that
I know it’s not KDE Plasma, but Gnome on Ubuntu has Tiling Shell. It also lets you span multiple tiles too.
Yeah, but then I’d be using Gnome.
Preach.
Fancy zones and alt snap rule! (Although I believe alt snap - click-dragging windows with a keyboard activator - is core window manager stuff?)
It isn’t the snapping I was referring to, but the ability to make a window span multiple areas. In KDE the window can only snap into a single area.
Power toys is so bad now. Almost all the features are completely useless and it hogs a ton of system resources.
Meh… switch to linux, already
I remember using it way more in 98/XP. Group Policy manager is what I have to use for most of the shit I wanna do with 10. Which is only available with a Pro license.
not using https://massgrave.dev/ for windows licences
statements made by the utterly deranged
I didn’t mean imply I don’t have one. It’s just stupid that such a feature is only available through a more expensive tier if you actually pay for it.
Have been using PowerToys for years, can’t imagine using Windows without it.
