Setup¶
My Windows laptop configuration as a computer engineering student.
Philosophy¶
Best of Both Worlds¶
Windows and Linux excel at different things:
- Windows has a better GUI and more powerful productivity apps
- Linux is better for programming
I use each OS to their advantage by running Windows on my personal device and using WSL to get a Linux environment on it.
WSL vs dual-boot
Dual-booting Windows and Linux is another way of running both OS's on a device, but WSL offers very similar performance in the majority of tasks while being much more convenient: WSL distributions can be started in a matter of seconds and can be used simultaneously with Windows apps. Especially with WSL adding the support for Linux GUI apps in Windows 11, there are a dwindling number of reasons to dual-boot. Some reasons include WSL's poor filesystem performance and the computer having little RAM (< 16GB).
Minimize Mouse Usage¶
Every switch between using the mouse and keyboard takes time and energy, both of which I have little of. Thus, I use:
- Vim commands. See the IDE page to learn more.
- Keyboard shortcuts in Windows as much as possible. See the Windows Keyboard Shortcuts page for a list of the shortcuts I frequently use.
Same Experience Across Computers and Programs¶
To have the same experience on all the computers I use (personal, work, school, homelab), I:
- Created a dotfiles repository that contains my dotfiles and an installation script
- Standardized keyboard shortcuts across programs
- Largely based on my Vim and Microsoft Edge keyboard shortcuts
- Standardized CLI configuration across shells
- Wrote these notes so that I remember how everything works