For reasons I will not get into now, I have been spending some more time in Vista lately to get accustomed to it. As a user who’s been 100% dependent on Linux for a while, I have a personally customized Linux environment that I set up on every system I run — it’s my comfort zone. The environment includes myriad keyboard shortcuts, a shell (obviously), multiple desktops (managed by Compiz Fusion), and more. Like I said, it’s my comfort zone.

In Vista though — or really, any version of Windows — I have no comfort zone. And because of my infrequent use of it, I’ve never bothered to create one. That is, until now.

Vista isn’t really as bad as I initially reported; I was admittedly biased against it from the get-go. It still has a huge hard drive footprint, but I slimmed it up a bit by cleaning up some stuff and trimming down system restore. Plus, I have a huge hard drive (oh, that is such the Windows-like rationalization, I know.)

There are a bunch of things that I need to have to be comfortable navigating an operating system nowadays, things that I need to have to be productive and not become horribly frustrated. The following is a list of these things and how I achieve them in Vista:

• A decent browser. Easy, Firefox.

• A decent email client. Also easy, Thunderbird.

• An Instant Messaging client: Pidgin. Pidgin connects to everything.

• A decent, tabbed text editor for quick notes and simple editing. It has to be tabbed; I keep a lot of different things open for reference at different times, and having the same application open over and over again to keep track of different pieces of information is not a good plan. It is in fact retarded.

  Notepad++ fills the tabbed-editor niche nicely. Why Notepad isn’t Notepad++ I have no idea.

• A terminal shell. Simple: Windows Command Prompt. Yikes, just kidding. Windows Command Prompt, though probably wonderful for Windows administration, is horribly inadequte for navigation and general non-administration shell-based work. Don’t believe me? That’s fine. You’re wrong. Anyway, Cygwin is a worthy Linux-like environment that provides all the necessary functionality and more (it even has an X server, if you need that kind of thing.)

• A graphical, SFTP-capable FTP client. A couple free applications I am evaluating are FileZilla and WinSCP. They both seem adequate, but I’m leaning towards FileZilla because it has more view options.

  For a regular, tried-and-true standalone SSH client, there is always the de facto standard, PuTTY.

• Ext support. Ext2 IFS for Windows does the trick nicely. This is a definite plus because until recently, I would use an NTFS partition for inter-operating system access. Mounting NTFS from Linux is no big deal, but the permission systems are different, so that’s all wacky. I’d much rather keep the filesystem Ext3 and mount it from Windows. So far, so good.

• Multiple desktops. This is truly a must-have for me. I keep three desktops going at the same time, at all times, for organizational and sanity purposes. As I mentioned, on Linux I use Compiz Fusion, which provides the oft-hyped desktop cube, as well as other visual effects, such as an application ring switcher, which is utterly useful, and is the best application switcher I’ve used in terms of intuitiveness and effectiveness.

  There is no way to duplicate the cube or the ring switcher in Vista, but there is a way to have multiple desktops, and I’ll settle for that. The Vista/XP Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) provides a decent, customizable multi-desktop environment. It allows you to alter the key-bindings for most of its functionality, and I have it set up to behave similarly to Compiz Fusion (aside from the actual “cube”, that is.)

  VDM is a welcome addition to the Vista experience. You will not realize how powerful and efficient a multiple desktop environment is until you use one for a while. This is something that *Nix systems have included since the beginning of time.

• Key bindings. In Windows, this can be divided into two parts: application shortcut keys and Windows key combinations. Or, respectively, editable and impossible to change. The latter is troublesome, so let’s start with that.

  On almost every system, Alt+F4 is the default key combination to kill the open window. I’m not sure what the default key combination is to toggle between maximized and non-maximized windows, or if there even is a default, but in my Linux comfort zone, I have Alt+1 bound to kill the current window and Alt+2 bound to toggle between maximized and not maximized. I don’t care that Alt+F4 is standard, because it is a physically uncomfortable stretch to reach up there with one hand; Alt+1 is right there, it’s not uncomfortable, and I don’t have to look. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be a built-in way to modify this key binding to be anything other than Alt+F4 in Windows. I am working on that. If you know how to do it, please do share. I actually use this functionality all the time, more than I realized until every time I tried to do it in Vista it did nothing. If I must resort to Alt+F4, then obviously, I can. I just don’t want to until I’ve exhausted all other decent options, which I don’t feel I have yet.

  The application shortcut keys are easy, and as you probably already know, just right click on an application -> Properties -> Shortcut Tab -> Shortcut key and do your desired key combination once the text field has focus. Done and done.

So far that’s my list. I’ll update it as things move along and things get figured/ironed out.

I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised with the number of quality, open source applications available for the Windows platform. You know, it would be interesting to write one…