Unfortunately I'm forced to use a Windows machine as my desktop box at work. This causes me pain. Things that would be a two minute job (like burning ISO images to DVD) take an age, and require the installation of third party software. I miss select-to-copy and middle-click-paste. Creating Word documents isn't scriptable. Applications put user data on the C: drive. It's a mess.
I have lessened the pain somewhat with the use of some choice apps:
- Dexpot (virtual desktops and hotkey desktop switching).
- WinKey (key bindings to launch apps).
- X-Win32 (X server).
- Cygwin (BASH and various Unix tools).
After installing all that crap, Windows is just about usable. I can Ctrl-Tab between a fullscreen CDE session and a Windows desktop, and I can operate in a relatively mouse-less way most of the time.
I have lessened the pain somewhat with the use of some choice apps:
- Dexpot (virtual desktops and hotkey desktop switching).
- WinKey (key bindings to launch apps).
- X-Win32 (X server).
- Cygwin (BASH and various Unix tools).
After installing all that crap, Windows is just about usable. I can Ctrl-Tab between a fullscreen CDE session and a Windows desktop, and I can operate in a relatively mouse-less way most of the time.
On the upside though, I've had a chance to test that Java web server I was working on a while back (it's still not finished, but I intend to get back into it soon). I'm surprised to report that it works just fine on Windows with Sun's Java installed. I was expecting all kinds of hassle with path seperators etc, but it's all handled very gracefully. Nice.
