For our everyday work we are using Open Source software and GNU/Linux as primary operating system. We find it very easy to set up, comfortable to use and stable, but also easily customizable. Unfortunately there are still some areas of work that requires us to use Microsoft Windows. Some time ago you could see us going mad trying to move a window with alt + left click mouse under Microsoft Windows. Now we have a solution to this and other problems of Linux people using Windows.

In this article you will find some tips on how to make work in Windows easier for Linux users (possibly not only).

During our work, we found several solutions that helps not to swear so much while using Microsoft Windows. Here they are:

Standard software

This might be obvious for some people, but I personally could not work without a good editor in the system. Did you know that you can use both Vim and EMACS in Windows. We are VIM-loving geeks so we can only confirm that Vim works, although we heard that there is no problem running EMACS.

For ssh and telnet in Windows you can use putty.

Some of specialized Open Source software known form Linux (like Gimp, Blender, Open Office and others) works also on Windows, so be sure to check.

Putty: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

Launching software

In windows you basically have only two options to launch the software: (double)click on its shortcut somewhere (Destkop or Start Menu) or find the executable somewhere inside of folder structure. As Linux user you probably got used to pressing alt+F2 or alt+space (with Katapult) for launching applications, as we realized very few people actually use (K/Gnome) menu for starting programs. As a matter of fact more people use konsole/gnome-terminal/xterm start applications than use The Menu.

We have a nice news for you, and it is called Launchy. Launchy is an Open Source application that was natively written for Windows, its concept is very similar to Katapult from KDE/Linux, but functionality is even greater. By pressing alt+F2 you can:

• - Launch installed software
• - Search on the Internet
• - Calculate
• - Launch indexed files from your disk (Documents, Music, Pictures)
• - etc.

Accessing your Linux partitions

We came across two ways of accessing Linux (ext2/3) partitions from Windows. One is good second not so much. Lets start with the worst one: It is called ext2 inside, and it is a driver for windows enabling it to see beside FAT and NTFS also EXT2/3 partitions inside of My Computer. Why is it bad? For once I wouldn’t like Windows to have full access to my Linux system, and even if you are not planning to access Internet with your Windows system, be prepared to find new folders in your Linux filesystem, like /Recycled.

A better solution (the one that we are actually using) is having Total Commander installed in system using ext2fs plugin. You are able to read/write to your Linux partitions, but only from Total Commander. I don’t need to tell you, that it is less probable to cause problems than making Linux partition writeable to every program running in system and buggy system itself. In this case you only need to care about Total Commander that is stable and thrustable software anyway.

ext2 inside: http://www.fs-driver.org/

Total Commander and plugins: http://totalcmd.pl/download

Move this window

The most annoying thing for people that are normally using X11/Xorg system, is lack of alt+left mouse button windows move. There is a solution, and it is called win-x-mouse, it is a software that while staying in the tray, will handle alt+left mouse button for windows movement like in X11/Xorg. You will have to make a shortcut in Autostart, and there are problems with moving some applications (like Winamp), but mostly it is working fine, like in Linux.

Win-x-mouse: http://sourceforge.net/projects/winxmove/

Middle click

You can use ctrl+c ctrl+v to copy and paste some text in system, it works both, in Linux and in Windows. What you will not get in Windows is middle mouse button copy, at least you would think so. There is an nice software called X-Mouse Gizmo. Its purpose is to allow users to copy selected text by using middle mouse button, like in X11/Xorg..It is not perfect, because it will take over all middle mouse actions, so forget about using middle button in Firefox or Opera.

True X-Mouse Gizmo for Windows: http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/nt/TXMouse/

3D Cube

Working on multiple desktops is a nice and useful idea. When we combine power of Compiz/Beryl we get not only multiple desktop environement but also nice looking effects that can dazzle your co-workers. Now You can use 3D rotating cube also on Windows.

Yet anOther Desktop Manager 3D: http://www.chrisnsoft.com/langswitch_lang/en

We would like you to know that we are not trying to promote Microsft Windows in any way, the only reason that we are writing this article is that we are aware that many of software is running only on this operating system, so you will have to switch from your UNIX to Windows. We are using Windows for gaming and software that is not working correct under any emulation or virtualization under Linux. While working on Windows remember to save your work every minute, and backup your work every day.

If you know of any other solution (not mentioned here) that is useful for UNIX/Linux people on Windows let us know, and we will try to extend this article.