Linux user surviving on Windows

I am an avid Linux user and I consider Linux to be a better OS (c’mon it has glitches too). I have been successfully avoiding Windows for the past four years except for the rare times when vital software refused to run under Linux or Wine, as was the case with Garmin update utility for my GPS.

Since I’ve started my internship, however, I am using a Windows laptop and the first couple of weeks were a pain. Some of it has been cured by these utilities I’ve discovered (in addition to Cygwin, of course):

• PuTTYcyg – allows you to use your PuTTY terminal (with nice fonts, expandable screen, etc.) as a Cygwin terminal instead of Windows console / xterm. Try it, it’s super easy to install.

• Power menu – allows you to stick your windows on top of others so that you can have a terminal open in the foreground and be doing things in the background (browsing, for example) without having to constantly bring the terminal back up. It also supports changing opacity for individual windows. The best part of it, however, is the fact that all those options are available from the context menu of the window.
• MSVDM – Microsoft Virtual Desktop Manager from Microsoft PowerToys for Windows. Allows you similar functionality as the workspace switcher applet in GNOME.

I still haven’t found anything good to use as a GUI editor like my favourite gedit =[ I am using Notepad++ for now, but it seems to be too bloated and a bit dumb to my taste.

Update: GNOME project does have Win32 binaries for gedit. ;D