[gelasio]

One reason I do most of my programming from Windows is because I find Linux programming tools to be either very bare-bones, UI/UX-wise or some kind of ill-fitting cross-platform Java thing. I'm talking about run of the mill stuff like a Git UI, Diff Viewer, Text editors, Icon editors and other specialty image and file editors...and also bigger apps that people usually name.

Maybe you prefer a terminal and maybe your terminal can do what my GUI tools can do or maybe they can't or vice-versa. There's going to be a lot of bias when you work and give your life to these things. To me, Linux is a really nice server or device that I use to run stuff but that's all it will ever be until it has a plethora of high quality GUI apps that I want to use.

[PuffinBlue]

What apps do you use? I'm just switching over from Linux to Windows and I've been a bit 'lost' without the terminal. I'd love to hear what you're using whatever it is, doesn't matter if it's not specifically for what I'm doing, it would just be great to get a bit of knowledge of what's available for Windows.

[gelasio]

Depends on what I'm doing. TortoiseGit is my preferred Git UI. Notepad++ (used with "Notepad replacer") is my quick text-file editor, but mostly I use the free Visual Studio 2015 edition for working on whole projects. When I'm doing Node.js projects I use Microsoft's Node.js Tools extension which has really nice autocomplete and debugging features. Also the WebEssentials extension includes editors for all sorts of web-related file types that I need to edit like LESS/SCSS/Coffescript/etc. Beyond Compare is my diff/patch utility as I mentioned somewhere else. It's totally worth the very low price-tag. Some other stuff I use: Greenshot, Postman, ScreenToGif, IcoFx (free version), Paint.NET, Pencil, yed, mIRC, VirtualBox for my *nix VMs, Putty, WinSCP, 7+ Taskbar tweaker, KeePass. I have also run PostgreSQL, Redis and MongoDB directly on Windows in the past. If I'm using Linux to run code that I'm editing, I can edit it right in the terminal or use the WinSCP feature of keeping a directory in sync so that I can edit everything on Windows but have it stored directly in the Linux VM when I hit the save button.

There are some pain points and growing pains. It could take a while to put together the kit that works for whatever you're doing. One thing that really annoyed me about VS was that it was adding UTF-8 BOM and CR/LF to every file. I had to install and configure extensions like "line endings unifier" and "fix file encoding" to change it. But I always just stop what I'm doing and lookup how to change VS or Windows if it does stuff that I don't want and I usually find an acceptable solution.

[PuffinBlue]

Thanks, I'll take a look at what you've mentioned. Much appreciated.