Windows 11 Just Got Exciting Again

When I was much younger and was still learning my way around a computer, I remember there being this fun sense of discovery. Like, "What can I make this computer do?". I had a Windows XP computer at the time, and the fun of learning how to do things on the computer was intoxicating to me. Eventually, I would make my way through every subsequent version of Windows.

I also frequently dabbled in Linux, another operating system that is most commonly used on servers and, from my perspective at the time, something that "Elite" computer users would use on their personal rigs. It was also fun and exciting because it was so fundamentally different from Windows, and had so much customization available within it.

I have used Linux professionally on and off for several years now. At my last job, I was tasked with a massive data export task where we pulled over 52 million .xml files for a client (each was an individual report file) from our systems to put onto a physical disc to mail to the client. We had a Linux server stuffed into an empty cubicle generating these files over the course of several months that I would monitor and gradually pull files from for encryption and compression. I had a Ubuntu machine under my desk that I was using for the compression (separate from the other machine so as not to mess with the systems fetching the data).

Why my taste for Windows went sour

More recently (the past 5+ years) I have been developing solely on macOS because that is what my current employer uses. MacOS is not Linux, but they share a common ancestor such that macOS has a POSIX command line, so I've become very accustomed to it. (Which, I should note, Windows does not have)

I'm a developer who enjoys using the command line often. I don't go out of my way to replace everything with command line use, but I find myself using it daily. Because of work over several years, the command line I am used to is not the Windows shell. That means I have gotten used to the quick creation of aliases, the general syntax of POSIX, writing .sh files to do things quickly, etc. Windows doesn't do any of those things out of the box.

Couple that with following various Linux channels on YouTube, generally following Linux news, couple that will all sound from Windows haters so common among that crowd and you can quickly see how I (unintentionally) began to see my home Windows computer as a "problem".

Why not just run Linux full-time? I've tried. Without going into any specifics (because that would probably be another entire article) Windows is actually the perfect system for my home computer. I enjoy some gaming now and then with family members (both my kids and siblings) and we sometimes play games that don't work out of the box on Linux. I'm sure I could get them working one way or another, but I don't know how, and between work, a master's program, and four kids, I don't have the time to go hacking around an OS like I once did, nor do I honestly have the desire to right now. I need something that just works, and Windows does that for me, whether I want it to or not.

The Need for a Refresh

I've recently taken some time off from my master's program (finished classes for a term early) but I will be resuming classes in about two weeks again. As you're no doubt familiar, computers (especially Windows it seems) tend to slow down over time as files add up, programs are installed/removed, caches aren't cleared, and just general cruft builds up over time. Every year or so I like to do some "spring cleaning" and reinstall Windows from scratch to get a clean system again. This time around, however, I'd been avoiding doing it for a long time because of the time commitment. While backup time is minimal because I keep all my files on a separate disk from the operation system, I would still have to go to the site of every program I want to install again, get installers, and manually install everything. (This is such a first-world problem, but here we are).

I have dual-booted Linux for some time, and the setup time there for a new system, thanks to package managers, is only a few minutes. In fact, I have scripts I have created that install everything I need with the run of a single command. I've never been able to do that with Windows. Windows takes forever to get reconfigured when installing it from scratch, and because of those thoughts in my head, I'd been putting it off which was causing more anxiety because I felt like my computer was a "mess" and I wanted it clean.

I had actually reached a point in my own mind where trying to decide what operating system to use full-time was causing anxiety in my mind. Yeah, looking back just a couple of days ago and knowing that was an actual problem seems ridiculous now. I wanted to use Linux for my desktop (I already have two Linux servers in the house for media and other purposes) but there were things still tying me to Windows. "The Linux community would be so disappointed." I would think to myself.

Thankfully, I got over it.

The Excitement Came Back... Once I Got Out of My Head

Last year, at All Things Open, which I attended virtually (anyone can attend virtually for free) I watched a talk given by Scott Hanselman about developing for Linux on Windows (you can view it yourself here). I recently watched it again, and something he said at the beginning stuck out to me:

I work for Microsoft right now... even though Microsoft is known for Windows I am non-denominational... but I do enjoy Windows and I know a lot of people have a lot of strong feelings about it, but I'm going to show you some stuff that maybe you haven't seen before... and if you don't like it I don't care because that means more Windows for me.

I watched the talk when he gave it, but this time, that part stuck out to me. When I heard that, I decided it was time to just get rid of my dual-boot configuration and use WSL for my Linux needs on my desktop system instead.

That at least solved my mental issue of "you must use Linux", but what about the install time problem?

A few years ago, Microsoft created Winget, essentially a package manager for Windows that would do the same thing as the package managers that are available in Linux and that you can get for macOS. (I know that some have existed for Windows like Chocolately, but frankly, I was too stuck up in my mind to try some dirty package manager that Windows had, because I was listening too much to Linux zealots). With my fresh perspective, thanks to Hanselman, I decided to just go all-in on Windows' features, and that included winget.

I'm so glad I did.

The list of applications I needed is as follows:

• Google Chrome
• Spotify
• VS Code
• Steam
• Brave
• Slack
• Android Studio
• Minecraft
• Ubuntu 22.04 (WSL)
• 7Zip
• JupyterLab
• Cura
• Ditto
• VLC Player

I was shocked to find out that apart from installing system drivers every additional program I wanted to install (except for one I can think of) was available through Winget. To install everything that I just listed, I only needed to run a single command in PowerShell:

winget install Google.Chrome Spotify.Spotify Microsoft.VisualStudioCode Valve.Steam Brave.Brave SlackTechnologies.Slack Google.AndroidStudio Mojang.MinecraftLauncher Canonical.Ubuntu.2204 JupyterLab Ultimaker.Cura 7zip.7zip Ditto.Ditto VideoLAN.VLC

Then, I could just sit back and relax while my whole computer was set up. Of course, I still have to configure my development environments again, but I've done that enough times that it's pretty quick.

It's been far too long since I actually gave Windows a good look from a developer's perspective, and I've prevented myself from doing that because of listening to too many Linux enthusiasts. Now, I'm going to go play with my squeaky-clean Windows installation some more and see what else I can do.

And if you don't like it, I don't care, because that means more Windows for me.