First impressions of Moving back to Windows

Update: So, this exercise was a disaster. I have compromised for working with WSL for now. More updates will come in a follow-up post.

I bought a new MSI Prestige notebook thinking the first thing I’ll do is install Ubuntu on this. I couldn’t find a thumb drive with 8GB storage. I didn’t realize people don’t have those lying around anymore. So, here I was, stuck with Windows 10 home edition. I chose to move forward.

It’s been about 6 or 7 years since I last used Windows as my daily OS. Windows 8 had just come out and I was still on Windows 7. That was before I started coding. I gave up after seeing the touch-first design of the UI. Things haven’t been easy since I moved to using a Mac both at office and home about 4 years ago. To not have a terminal to start things off feels kind of awkward now. That being said, I believe I am not such a power user to be honest. But I am pretty comfortable with a terminal. I enjoy using ZSH, vim, git and little shell scripts. 90% of my usage of the terminal depends on warehousing and work related stuff that can be setup in a day. Moving to Windows now isn’t going to be the same.

The first thing to note obviously is how much is going on in the background. And I can’t seem to find how to control or stop that. I like being in control and Windows isn’t making it easy. Going through the System Settings to minimize telemetry related settings took about 2 hours I think. It seemed almost deceptive with all the sneaky little check-boxes and radio buttons here and there. I am not entirely convinced I got through all of them. Things are still downloading in the background. Nvidia drivers, Norton updates, Windows updates and something called “additional features” downloads continuously running. I am still learning about them as I go.

Some things were refreshingly pleasant to realize though.

• Color blind mode

I can switch between color blind mode with a single and easy shortcut(Ctrl+Win+C). It leaves a little to be desired, to be honest. There’s a Greyscale and a Greyscale Inverted among other color modes. It would’ve been nice if I could cycle through them rather than it being toggled on and off.

• Workspaces

Oh, how I was thinking I was going to miss this. But they have it now. And I can use my touch pad to cycle through applications in different workspaces using a 3-finger swipe! This is the one thing I wasn’t ready to give up as a Mac user. And you have it here. I still haven’t figured out the shortcuts to easily move applications to a different workspace but I’ll get to that sooner rather than later. (That’s one thing I hate about Mac and love about Gnome, crazy shortcuts!). I still haven’t attached my laptop to an external screen. We’ll see how it goes then.

• Night mode and Focus Assist

Scheduled night mode had become quite common these days even in phones. It was nice to find it here too. Focus Assist lets you turn off your notifications either with a schedule or with a shortcut. I still have to find ways to automate this along with my pomodoro timer perhaps.

• Colors and the 4-finger swipe

Accent colors in themes can be chosen from the background image and that adds a certain look and feel that I was surprisingly happy to find out about. I didn’t know I would like that. The 4-finger swipe lets you set the system volume or access the notifications area with a 4-finger tap. I am gonna be using that a lot!

• Installing programs and tools

Update: I ran into issues continuously. Couldn’t install docker or spacevim successfully. Tried using scoop/chocolatey. Have settled on using WSL with cmder for now. More updates will come in a follow-up post.

Well, this one comes with it’s own set of pros and cons. Installing stuff on Windows is a click-click-click game. Dependency tree is not really clear and background services and PATH variables and global dot-folder style of doing settings are hard to find. It’s just a matter of getting used to it, I think. But everything is there and it works. So far so good. I am thinking of moving to VS Code with vim mode for now. We shall see.

• Games and MSI gaming settings

I am not much of a gamer or designer to be honest. And steam does mitigate the need for a Windows PC for playing simple games. But with this purchase, I am willing to jump into this world as well. It’s exciting for me and I am looking forward to this.

All in all, it has been smooth sailing so far. MSI Prestige is a good hardware for general use and I have absolutely no complaints with the keyboard and touch pad. It could have been better if it was moved up and the speakers placed elsewhere. But like I said earlier, it’s a matter of getting used to it. OH and yes. The notebook has a hardware switch for the camera (wow!) but not for the wireless channels (WiFi and Bluetooth).

I am keeping my fingers crossed!