I have been a full time Linux user for over 10 years now, at home and professionally. For a new job, I will now be using Windows to develop software.<p>Do you people have any tips for a long time Linux user to feel comfortable / at home using Windows?<p>Some things important to me are:
1. Shell: I believe the WSL can help me here.
2. Keyboard centric life
3. Tiling Window management: I use bspwm and cannot imagine a life without tiling
Learn to use Powershell. You might not like it if you are a BASH wizard, but it has a large number of modules which ease administration. Even if you manage to spend most of your time in WSL2 and VisualStudio/IntelliJIDEA you will still need to administer and interrogate your host OS. Powershell is the sanest way to do that.<p>You should probably see what you can do with Chocolatey/Scoop depending on security policy. Package management in Windows is severely deficient compared to GNU/Linux distros but those are possibilities.
Windows Subsystem for Linux Installation Guide for Windows 10<p><a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10" rel="nofollow">https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10</a>
Create a larger separate storage partition for all valuable data, then move all valuable data from your C: volume to sensible folders which you create there.<p>Redirect the future data generated to the same or additional folders on the storage partition(s).<p>Keep a record of what default settings are changed to accomplish fully effective data storage to places other than C: in every way.<p>These folders can easily be backed up (copied) manually to external drives, retaining the same structure as on the working storage volume.<p>Still install all programs to C: and C: can retain their settings along with your Windows settings.<p>You manually build a simple straightforward text record of the mission-critical installs & settings you make to Windows and the programs on C: anyway as you go along. Much easier to reproduce settings from your own log than any Windows install log.<p>Now C: then only grows with the size of Windows, its updates, and the executable apps installed but not the data generated. Also the garbage like Temporary Internet Files stays on C: but you're supposed to have that kind of thing excluded before backing up. So a complete backup of your C: volume is as small as reasonably workable and only takes a few minutes to save as a WIM file using DISM.<p>And even less time to unWIM the backup file onto a freshly zeroed & formatted partition when you need to get your system back.<p>DISM is made especially to back up the structure of a Windows volume like you can not do manually but would be good if you could. Folders on C: other than Windows' needs come along for the ride and fatten up the backups so you have to be judicious about them.<p>Done right it's the quickest way to recover when you suffer from a Windows failure or corruption on C:.<p>So even in case of a complete HDD failure you can rapidly go from a new(ly) zeroed HDD to a partitioned, formatted equivalent of your former system as of its latest backups without the woe that can ensue when you let C: in general become fat with anything but necessary apps or let the
C:\USERS folder become scattered with things that you are not willing to discard, while trying to depend on less-manual backup plans than DISM.<p>Windows, and therefore the whole C: volume has always been best treated as disposable regardless of how much people think it is worth.<p>You probably can't rehearse your backup & recovery process too carefully or too far in advance.<p>After using DISM to recover, you can use BCDBOOT to create new boot files.<p>Some apps are not robust enough to withstand this process without additional re-enabling of some kind so test them all, and really shoddy ones which need to be reinstalled anyway can then be excluded from backups to further simplify the backup until a more appropriate app can be found worth including instead.