PowerShell for the (Unix) masses

Screenshot of how my PowerShell setup looks like Screenshot of how my PowerShell setup looks like

Last time I wrote about my development setup on Windows 10, I suggested using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and I still think this is the best (or most confortable) approach for most Unix people. However, you might find yourself in a situation where you can't really use WSL, such as needing to compile Windows native binaries or your company-issued laptop just won't allow it.

I actually am in one of those situations, so at first I tried a Cygwin setup, and it did work, but not painlessly (it took me some work to get to a place where I was confortable) and it was slow and buggy at times.

After much pain and unwillingness to dedicate more time to Cygwin, I said "screw it" and went the Windows-way (not without some initial resistance of course) and found out that you can get a pretty "Riced Unix" feel with PowerShell easily, and that PowerShell is actually good. So here's a writeup on how I got it working the way I like.

1. Install Git

You know you need it. You can get Git for Windows here.

2. Install Windows Terminal

The …

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Development Setup on Windows 10

Screenshot of how my Windows 10 setup looks like Screenshot of how my Windows 10 setup looks like

Before I start, let me get something straight: No, I haven't lost my mind.

With that cleared out, let me give a little background: I've been working for years on Unix systems, first on Ubuntu (and a bunch of different distros) and recently on a Mac. I never really liked the development ecosystem for Windows. That haven't changed much, my work laptop still is a MacBook Pro, however, I've been gaming quite more often now during quarantine, so having to change between my "work" OS (Ubuntu) and my gaming OS was starting to get a little bit tiring, so I was wondering if I could get Windows 10 set the way I like to work on my personal projects.

I found this great blog post after Googling "Developer setup for Windows 10", and it really helped me get where I can work comfortably. Here's a writeup on what I did, so maybe it might be useful for someone trying to move from a Mac (or Linux) to Windows.

Install the Chocolatey package manager

I don't really use Chocolatey much, but it's useful when constantly working on Windows, also, I used it …

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