Windows

Windows 10

I hardly use Windows these days, except to play games on Steam and arrange music in Sibelius. It can be made slightly more bearable by installing the Scoop command line installer. I tried to like Chocolatey but it's a bit bollocks.

To install Scoop, see the instructions on their site, but last time I checked, in Powershell:

iwr -useb get.scoop.sh | iex

Now we can have stuff installed without twelve different updater taskbar icons running. Scoop installs stuff under your User directory wherever possible, avoiding admin permissions. Here's a bunch of popular apps in the Scoop repos (called buckets) which can be enabled thus:

scoop bucket add extras nonportable
scoop install grep vim sudo wget dos2unix unzip
   openssl docker waypoint azure-cli terraform nomad go rustup
   atom windows-terminal powertoys wincompose greenshot
   ffmpeg k-lite-codec-pack-mega-np youtube-dl handbrake shotcut
   musescore audacity inkscape gimp sumatrapdf
   discord telegram whatsapp thunderbird keepassxc nextcloud

Some stuff needs to be installed globally:

sudo scoop install -g sshfs-np winfsp-np virtualbox-ng

Wincompose turns right-Alt into an X-style compose key, which makes typing áàâåāčçöµ© much easier. KeepassXC is a password manager, with plugins for Firefox and Chrome.

Remove OneDrive

In a cmd window run these:

%SYSTEMROOT%\SysWOW64\OneDriveSetup.exe /uninstall
rd "%USERPROFILE%\OneDrive" /Q /S
rd "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\OneDrive" /Q /S
rd "%PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft OneDrive" /Q /S
REG DELETE "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}" /f
REG DELETE "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}" /f

Delete or move Saved Pictures and Camera Roll

Move them to the profile root, or just delete them.

Remove Cortana

Run this at an admin Windows PowerShell (< v7) prompt:

Get-AppxPackage -allusers Microsoft.549981C3F5F10 | Remove-AppxPackage

And just to be sure, edit the registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search]
"AllowCortana"="0"

Reboot when you're good and ready, and not before

Nuke the UpdateOrchestrator Reboot tasks in the Task Scheduler by replacing them with directories to trip it up when Windows tries to recreate them. See this answer to this Superuser question.

cd C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows
takeown /F UpdateOrchestrator /A /R /D y
icacls UpdateOrchestrator /reset /T /C
icacls UpdateOrchestrator /T /C /grant *S-1-5-32-544:F 
cd UpdateOrchestrator
mv Reboot Reboot.backup
mv Reboot_Battery Reboot_Battery.backup
mv Reboot_AC Reboot_AC.backup
mv USO_UxBroker USO_UxBroker.backup
mkdir Reboot & mkdir Reboot_Battery & mkdir Reboot_AC & mkdir USO_UxBroker
copy NUL Reboot\empty_file & copy NUL Reboot_Battery\empty_file
copy NUL Reboot_AC\empty_file & copy NUL USO_UxBroker\empty_file

Nifty Windows Terminal PowerShell prompt with git indicators

We can get this going using Windows Terminal and Powerline. Windows documentation for these are here and here, but essentially it is this:

1. Install Git (using scoop, or the Windows installer).
2. Install the Cascadia Code PL font, which includes extra private-space glyphs that the Powerline prompt will use.
3. Add the font to the PowerShell profile in the Windows Terminal settings.json file:

   "fontFace": "Cascadia Code PL"

4. In Powershell, install these modules:

    Install-Module posh-git -Scope CurrentUser
    Install-Module oh-my-posh -Scope CurrentUser
    Install-Module -Name PSReadLine -Scope CurrentUser -Force -SkipPublisherCheck
   

5. Add this to your PowerShell profile, in your Documents\WindowsPowerShell folder:

    Import-Module posh-git
    Import-Module oh-my-posh
    Set-Theme Paradox
   

Connecting to network drives with SSH

Install sshfs-win with Scoop and map remote drives using SSH:

net use N: \\sshfs\me@myserver\path\to\mystuff