Windows 10 Survival

Windows is not a good operating system for most jobs. Unfortunately, it is the only operating system available for many jobs. It sucks, however it can be made liveable.

Here's what I find just about necessary:

• a version of Windows 10 that doesn't spy by default
• Either strip the OS using the provided tools and guide, download a maybe trustworthy ISO from telegram after providing a phone number, or download a sketchy ISO from archive.org
• To obtain a genuine ISO to strip down, check for resources at r/piracy's wiki or a similar site
• If booting Windows alongside Linux, dump an ISO to USB via woeusb-ng
• So as to install Nvidia Control Panel on systems that may use it, see amecs
• open-shell, for a Windows start menu that's practical
• this may be used to customize the taskbar as well
• using this, I have something efficient, where pressing the windows key practically gives me dmenu, and holding the windows key and pressing "1", "2", or "3" will either open a terminal, explorer.exe, or the volume mixer
• Setting those latter shortcuts is achieved by pinning items to the task bar, with "1" being assigned to the left-most pinned program, "2" being assigned to the pinned item directly to the right of the left-most, and so on
• busybox-win32, for the following:

• sed
• grep
• a useful vi subset
• a decent POSIX-ish shell
• a shortcut may be made to launch a cmd window using busybox ash
• C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c "start ash -l"
• Using this command in specific forks ash into its own process, allowing for CTRL+C to stop the current shell process without also killing the shell
• In order to do this, a symlink to ash must be made, then put on path. This may be done via "busybox --install C:\path\to\directory"
• tar
• dos2unix
• du
• shuf
• wc
• dd
• httpd, mostly for sharing files or streaming music over the local network
• bc
• Floating-point division may be done via "bc -l"
• a web browser that works and doesn't spy
• Firefox requires brittle configuration to disable telemetry
• mpv, a video and audio player that does hardware accelerated decoding, plays any format ffmpeg can decode, and works well when launched from a terminal
• ffmpeg, for converting data from one format to another
• mtpaint, for drawing and animation work
• tinycc, a good native C compiler
• mingw, for when tinycc doesn't work
• curl, for general uploading or downloading to and from the internet

And here's stuff that's still nice to have

• Acme Stand-Alone Complex

• GNU ed, for when the line-editor itch strikes
• that itch strikes quite frequently!
• vile, a vi with line numbers

• a decent package manager
• I use choco
• It's the least bad I expect a package manager for Windows can be
• I've heard good things of scoop
• groff, for decent typesetting
• When I either want to make a pretty document or need to take notes I'll actually look at, I use troff
• A document typeset using groff on windows
• source
• Another document typeset using groff on windows
• source
• One more document typeset using groff on windows
• source
• ghostscript, for converting groff's PostScript output to PDF

• a script that calls groff, then ghostscript
• a script that polls for changes, then calls the above script upon detecting changes
• mupdf
• irssi, a console IRC client capable of file transfer
• wina, a somewhat workable forth
• qemu
• saucedacity, a less spooky audacity
• imagemagick
• kdenlive, though buggy, mostly works
• jpegview, an image viewer that doesn't suck
• spek, for checking the quality of audio
• ntop, windows' htop equivalent
• 7zip
• transmission
• netsurf, for checking how compatible a site is
• OpenSSH, which is likely included with your copy of Windows 10
• sshd is not included
• In order to get sshd, download and execute a '.msi' file provided here
• After installation, Windows may be accessed over SSH
• lmms
• rufus


I've found it very helpful to set the desktop background to a single color, set the taskbar to that same color, and have the taskbar autohide. In addition, I've disabled system-wide animations in the "Performance Options", leaving only anti-aliased fonts enabled. This gets rid of much of the jarring visuals. It has been very useful to use two workspaces, switching between them via Ctrl + Win + left arrow and Ctrl + Win + right arrow. What remains is setting colors and display fonts that you find comfortable. I like eggshell white with dark blue overlaid, and some orange or turqouise highlights. I like NK 57 Monospace Condensed Light, Inconsolata, or Cascadia Mono Extra Light. As a general rule, the more you can keep yourself in the terminal or simple graphical interfaces, the more you keep yourself away from terribly idiosyncratic graphical interfaces.