After my post minimalist Windows tools, I built up a Windows 10 Pro OS & software installation on a French laptop, and discovered yet more hugely useful minimalist tools.

first, winget

The Windows Package Manager is already there, and makes installing software so much faster.

winget update --all

I configure a function wl in my $MSWin10\PSProfile.ps1 to easily update lists of packages that I have installed on each machine.

Some packages install to ~\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WinGet\Packages\ and add themselves into the system path which I habitually check with $env:psmodulepath -split (';') and I usually see an unneccessary ; added to the end of the path which I fix like this:

$oldPathCU = (gp 'registry::hkcu\environment' path).path; $oldPathCU
$newPathCU = $oldPathCU -replace ';$', ''; $newPathCU
sp 'registry::hkcu\environment' -name path -value $newPathCU

then, more speedy stuff

  • AltSnap (Code), provides easier moving and resizing of windows. winget add altsnap. It sometimes needs to be kicked back into action, so I set a keystroke in my $MSWin10\AutoHotkey\HPEB840G37.ahk.
  • AutoHotkey: winget add AutoHotkey.AutoHotkey
  • BgInfo winget add BgInfo then I run it, set font down to 8 and Grey 50%, and position it top right
  • Coding:
    • (Code) winget add Kitware.CMake
    • (Code) winget add koalaman.shellcheck
    • (Installing Node.js via Package Managers) winget add OpenJS.NodeJS
    • MiKTeX: winget add miktex installs to ‘~\AppData\Local\Programs\MiKTeX’
    • Pandoc: winget add JohnMacFarlane.Pandoc installs to ~\AppData\Local\Pandoc\pandoc.exe
    • PowerShell: winget add Microsoft.PowerShell
    • Ruby: winget add RubyInstallerTeam.Ruby.3.2
    • Strawberry Perl: winget add StrawberryPerl.StrawberryPerl gets me a good-enough Perl installation, though Perl works better on Linux
    • Windows Terminal winget add 9N0DX20HK701
  • Documenting:
  • File management tools:
    • Alternatives to Get-ChildItem:
      • winget add eza-community.eza (Code)
      • winget add lsd (Code)
      • winget add sharkdp.fd (Code)
    • Everything (software): winget add voidtools.Everything
    • fzf: winget add fzf
    • Git: winget add git.git -l C:\Git
    • gokechan’s LF (Code) lets me zip around my filesystem from within WT - another game changer for which I am immensely grateful to the developers
    • How to install Visual C++ Build tools?, though I find winget add Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.BuildTools to be enough
      • then I can winget add rustup, then winget add burntsushi.ripgrep.msvc, oh yeah!
    • less-Windows (Code): winget install jftuga.less
    • Python: winget add python.python.3.12
    • Zig (programming language): winget add zig.zig
  • Imagey:
    • FastStone Image Viewer: winget add FastStone.Viewer
    • ImageMagick: winget add imagemagick (installs C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-7.1.1-Q16-HDRI)
    • IrfanView: winget add IrfanSkiljan.IrfanView -h installs to C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view64.exe
  • Internetworking:
  • KeePassXC: winget add KeePassXCTeam.KeePassXC
  • Text editing: