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!
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.
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 patches 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.
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.
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.
Meh… switch to linux, already
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!
Power toys is so bad now. Almost all the features are completely useless and it hogs a ton of system resources.
Powertoys on windows are a boon, but there’s absolutely no word you can say they make windows “behave like linux”. Not even close.
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.
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.
It’s for average users to make Windows easier to use. Though that’s the same as making it more Linux like
Have been using PowerToys for years, can’t imagine using Windows without it.
I’ve never heard of PowerToys Run, but it looks like Spotlight on MacOS but for Windows. Is this correct?
Windows Power Toys is a suite of programs and tweaks for Windows, one of which is “Run” that behaves similar to spotlight search on macOS. If you have to operate in Windows, I’d say the suite is a must-have for Run, Fancy Zones, File Renamer, Screen Ruler, and Color Picker alone. It’s good software that should be built into the OS but for some reason is not— built and maintained by a dedicated open source community these days as opposed to just a couple individuals from inside Microsoft back in the day when Power Toys was a proprietary tool first released on Windows 95.
Also has a “find cursor” macro
I use the plain text paste from powertools daily. Also does text OCR to clipboard.
All the things you say are mandatory are a distraction at best. And hog a lot of resources.
Spotlight run: adds nothing except being a slow down. It’s not that different from the standard search/run box. It just looks nicer. Way nicer.
Fancy zones: does not work reliable on multi monitor/big monitor setup. Useless in my use case. Has been for several years.
Fie renamer: … Really? This is a power tot these days?
Screen ruler: i don’t need rulers on my desktop, i need them in my apps.
Color picker: same. I do not have any use case for it. This is standard app functionality.
Every time i installed powertoys in the last 4/5 years i shrugged, cursed at Fancy zones for not working in my setup and removing it after a few days.
That’s the same usage loop as rainmaker or most stardock tools by the way. Good ideas but fucks up to many things.
The new tabbed shell. (Or not so new anymore these days) Now that is a real powertoy. Or the lnx subsysteem.
What do you mean when you say fancy zones doesn’t work reliably? I have 2 ultrawide monitors one on top of the other and I use 3 desktops, all with their own individual fancy zone layouts, it’s one of the only things I use powertoys for!
I think you’re confused about my sentiments.
It doesn’t matter how well the current apps run, they should be 1st class citizen features seeing as power toys has been around since Windows 95 days as a series of useful tweaks and applications that are ubiquitous enough to exist through till now, including the constant expansion of features since the windows 10 open source version was published several years ago.
If there wasn’t a dedicated community around these features, then you’d have an argument that they’re superfluous but the project has taken off like a rocket with regular improvements and fixes all these years now.
The point is that Microsoft is prioritizing so many things with AI/copilot these days, it’s a damn shame they relegate actually useful features to the open source community where performance and integration is likely suffering, despite the community’s best efforts.
I somewhat got your arguments. I just don’t feel the same about current day powertoys. They are not needed, don’t add anything useful and don’t work in a lot of setups. Current day powertoys are not what powertoys of the past where.
MS being focussed on the wrong shit to soon: well that has been true ever since the company existed. In the end looking back each and every innovation they did was needed but just years too soon and way too rough around the edges. I Guess we’ll see the same with ai. Some things will stick and be used by others but refined.
Yes! And they also have an Everything (way better search program than Windows has EVER been) plugin that I’ve tweaked to include Everything’s results at the top since the index it does is exponentially better than Windows’ own. Highly recommend for those that want that two button search that has always found what I was looking for on my own computer.
Shoutout to KDE for their search function, KRunner?, as it is amazing and ready to go from the get go.
Pretty much.
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.
Is there a Linux application that does what fancyzones does?
If you are under KDE, there is a plugin for this, but I don’t recall the name. I’ll tell you later when on my computer. I use it everyday.
So it is a separate app you have to manually install?
Kind of like PowerToys itself?
No, this is a plugin for KDE.
In the settings, go to windows management, scripts for KWin, then click on get new scripts (don’t know the exact names as my is isn’t English, but you’ll find out). Here you will find in the most downloaded the script KZones.
Install it and you will have a good replacement for the powertoys zones. You just need to edit the layouts to your convenience. For exemple, I have a portat screen so I did a simple layout for putting windows in the upper half and lower half of the screen.
Gnome also has a plugin(s) for this.
I use both, Fancy Zones and Gnome, but I like (one of) the gnome version(s) better.
Mainly, the Gnome version puts a quick toggle on screen for switching layouts with the mouse, and it makes better choices about what windows to display when shifting between windows with Alt+Tab.
