Easing the pain of using Windows 7

yashiro

yashiro

yashiro

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I've been using Linux on and off for about 10 years. Usually more off than on due to being a heavy gamer. In the past couple of years though I've been strictly Linux (Gnome/Compiz).

I'd not be switching to 7 but I'll be spending a lot of time in Warcraft so it's a necessary evil since the Linux WoW experience is not so great. Yes I've tried.

I was wondering if anyone had found some Windows gems that make a Linux user feel a bit more at home on Windows. Stuff like enabling multiple workspaces, easier desktop zooming, useful terminal and other apps.
 
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Putty is a useful terminal, but I love secureCRT for its multiple tabbed screens and notepad++ is a joy..
As for the rest - if windows was good for that sort of thing then there wouldn't be such a large linux community :D

You can have multiple workspaces in Win7
 
PuTTY is remote shell client. Cygwin is a terminal, with a bash shell, and even an ssh client and/or server.


Check it out, ssh the way you like it, with X11 forwarding running gnomine from my Ubuntu box, and xcalc locally, all on an XP machine.




Edit: lol, kinda messed up that screenshot a bit.
 
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I don't WoW, but have friends that do. They have people on their guild (?) that apparently swear blind that the performance they get in wine is better than Windows, although they had to tweak it to get that (you have to wonder about these people's Windows skills though... I mean the client isn't exactly designed for that!!)
 
I used to play wow 2 years ago under linux and performance was better than on windows. I remember running it as:

Code: 
wine '/home/Games/World of Warcraft/Wow.exe' -opengl
 
It blazes along on nVidia cards, ATi are a bit lacking in the driver dept, last time I tried on a [email protected], 4gb RAM and a 4870x2 in wine performance was abysmal, 40fps in Dalaran. Just do a stripped down XP install for your gaming.
 
WoW running faster in Linux is always a bit vague. The majority of people who run it in Linux haven't run WoW in OpenGL mode on Windows so it's a little biased when comparing performance. I personally didn't notice any difference (tried OpenGL in Windows) when using it on Linux, which, in all honesty is pretty remarkable :)
 
I love how everyone after Biggles completely missed the point and started giving wow on linux advice. :D
Wow is not the only game, I just gave it as the primary example.

I'll be getting back into gaming with some mates so playing via Wine on a top end i7 rig really isn't optimal. All I was after is apps that people have found that replicate how things are done in Linux. Desktop zoom, desktop switchers, weather in the tray, right click to set windows on top, that sort of thing.

So far the Claws Mail port seems to work quite well.
 
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LOL, so you were after the GUI tricks, not the competent command line.

M$ did a faux multi desktop thing for XP, not sure about 7, but windows on windows cannot be orphaned, so the multi desktop things are always a hack.
 
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Didn't mean to upset you walls. It's just both typical and frustrating that when making a simple post asking for recommendations people feel the need to question the question over anything else.
 
yashiro said:
Didn't mean to upset you walls. It's just both typical and frustrating that when making a simple post asking for recommendations people feel the need to question the question over anything else.
Click to expand...

Don't worry - no offence taken :)

You're absolutely right though - the thread really did take a bit of a wander off down the street to get the paper!
 
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