Windows 11

Software I use in 2025

Because I like lists!

A note, to start: My Mac Studio has largely sat idle or even powered off for most of 2025. I’m not sure why, exactly, but at some point I just found I didn’t enjoy using macOS anymore. It could be as simple as I’m much more used to the things that annoy me on Windows. Whatever the case, I will not be including Mac software below.

I will also not be listing any phone apps.

What I will be listing:

  • Software I use in Windows 11
  • Software I use in Linux Mint
  • Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) I use in both (or even the Mac, should I turn it back on)

Windows 11

  • Browser: Firefox. Backup: Vivaldi.
  • Diary/Journal: Diarium
  • Tasks: TickTick
  • Email: Fastmail (I use the web-based version)
  • Blogging: WordPress (I have tried many alternatives, none have stuck so far)
  • Text Editor: This is complicated. I can’t make up my mind, so I’m dabbling with all of these to varying degrees:
    • Obsidian
    • Notepad (built-in Windows app)
    • Notepad++
    • Zed
  • Messaging: Signal
  • Group chat: Discord
  • Social media: I am only on Mastodon now, I use the Phanpy web app as the client.
  • Music: The built-in Windows Media Player
  • Word Processor: I don’t use one much these days, but when I do, it’s LibreOffice Writer.
  • Fiction writing, with the caveat that I haven’t done much for the past few years:
    • Scrivener
    • novelWriter
  • Photo editing:
    • Affinity Photo
    • Photos (the built-in app)
    • Luminar Neo
  • Drawing: I do this on a tablet now, so nothing here
  • Audio editing: Audacity (I rarely do audio editing, though)
  • Video editing: DaVinci Resolve (I rarely do video editing)
  • RSS reader: Good question! I keep flipping through a bunch.
  • Read later: Folio (browser extension for Firefox)

The apps listed above that are paid:

  • Diarium (one-time purchase through the Microsoft Store)
  • TickTick (optional yearly subscription to open more features)
  • Affinity Photo (one-time purchase. This was before Affinity Studio launched, which is completely free but gates AI features behind a Canva subscription)
  • Luminar Neo (one-time purchase)
  • Scrivener (one-time purchase)

Linux Mint

  • Browser: Firefox. Backup: Vivaldi.
  • Diary/Journal: Zed
  • Tasks: TickTick (web version, as no native Linux version exists)
  • Email: Fastmail (I use the web-based version)
  • Blogging: WordPress
  • Text Editor: This is complicated. I can’t make up my mind, so I’m dabbling with all of these to varying degrees:
    • Obsidian
    • Sublime Text
    • Zed
  • Messaging: Signal
  • Group chat: Discord
  • Social media: I am only on Mastodon now, I use the Phanpy web app as the client.
  • Music: Rhythmbox (included with Mint). Backup: VLC Player.
  • Word Processor: LibreOffice Writer (included with Mint)
  • Fiction writing, with the caveat that I haven’t done much for the past few years:
    • Scrivener (I have the Windows version running through Lutris)
    • novelWriter
  • Photo editing:
    • Pix (included with Mint)
  • Drawing: I do this on a tablet now, so nothing here
  • Audio editing: Audacity (I rarely do audio editing, though)
  • Video editing: I have not done this on Mint.
  • RSS reader: Newsflash
  • Read later: Folio (browser extension for Firefox)

As you can see, there is a lot of overlap with Windows, which shows how much Linux software has matured in recent years. The one place I feel it lags is in photo/graphics editing (no, I will not use Gimp, the interface just repels me, for some reason1Also, they really should just change the name.).

Paid programs in Linux Mint are the same as Windows.

I think I covered all major categories, but if I’ve forgotten something, I’ll edit it in later.

Dark patterns and Windows 11 (and Samsung and OneDrive)

This is a story that is:

  • A breathtaking example of dark patterns and how not asking for consent from a user can lead to a tech-related catastrophe filled with bogus warnings and alerts.
  • A neat tale of dogged perseverance beyond what most people would do, with connecting-the-dots and searching saving the day.
  • A sad testament to what a big ol’ pile of poop Windows has become in its latest incarnation. For every good feature, it feels like there are two user-hostile ones added.

My own experience with Windows 11 has increasingly soured since its debut, which is a neat trick, considering an OS normally starts out kind of janky and unstable when it launches and smooths out over time. Instead, Windows 11 has become both increasingly fragile and obnoxious, with ads, dark patterns and AI shoved into every corner of it, even basic apps like Paint and Notepad.

Anyway, here’s the story of how OneDrive going rogue almost nuked someone’s Windows 11 installation. Enjoy!

Windows 11: Making photo editing weirdly laggy since 2025

The other night I thought to myself that I’ve been taking photos with my new camera, but hardly ever post any of them. So I went through and tagged a bunch I took on Saturday and found I had 51 apparently worth considering. That’s way too many, but it was a starting point. I did the tagging in Linux Mint, but photo editing is still a bit iffy there, so I switched back to Windows 11 and my main photo editing software, Affinity Photo.

I edited one raw image of a barn swallow, then loaded a second image, of a house sparrow. After doing this, Windows 11 turned into this weird, laggy mess. The mouse cursor would slowly drift across the screen on its own, as if it weighed several tons, never fully stopping, never responding to any clicks, though I could get it to slowly move in other directions. The keyboard was also non-responsive, so I could not invoke task manager by using CTRL-ALT-DEL to see what program had gone rogue., or if it was Windows itself.

In the end, I rebooted the PC. It was such an unpleasant experience I even briefly thought of switching over to the Mac, then remembered the security hell of trying to install mouse drivers on it that led me to abandoning it for what has now been multiple weeks, because I am done with modern computers constantly throwing obstacles in the way of a pleasant, or even just nondescript, user experience.

Windows 11 has been behaving so far since the reboot, but I’ve only edited a single photo. I’ll have the full batch of selected photos from last Saturday posted sometime in 2028, probably.

In the meantime, here is that one photo, of a barn swallow.

Linux Mint update: Good news, bad news

First, the good news, which started with Very Bad News.

I got Jeff a Lenovo YOGA 2-in-1 laptop a few months back to replace the aging and decrepit 2017 iPad Pro I gave him when I got a new one in 2020. It has worked OK since, but there have been a few little glitches and weirdness. I was unsure how much was to blame on the hardware, Windows or moon phases.

I got my answer a few days ago when the laptop booted up to an obscure Bitlocker error. I did not realize Bitlocker was even on–it’s activated by default on the Windows 11 install. Researching the error, I was not able to find a reliable solution. Jeff gave the thumbs up to the “nuke from orbit” option. I selected the Windows reset option that blows everything away. It produced an error message with no description other than “an error occurred.” I then offered to install Linux Mint. He said go ahead.

  • I prepped a Mint USB stick.
  • I inserted the stick and booted from it.
  • I chose the Install Linux Mint option on the desktop.
  • Linux Mint installed and was ready in significantly less time than it took to get to the Windows 11 desktop after unboxing the laptop–and Windows 11 is pre-installed.
  • Mint automatically recognized the Brother printer once it connected to the Wi-Fi. The touchpad was recognized, as was the included pen when using the built-in drawing app, cleverly named Drawing.

Everything is working just fine. The laptop, to me, feels snappier and more responsive. It may actually be a better laptop now with Mint than the bloated mess that is Windows 11. This is good news.

Now, the bad news. On my PC, I dual boot between Windows 11 and Mint. Mint has generally given me no issues, but at some point recently and issue did arise. It may have been an update or something else, I’m not sure. It’s not Bitlocker, at least.

The issue seems to be related to Firefox, the built-in browser (and my browser of choice) and YouTube. At some point, while watching a YouTube video, the whole system will freeze and continue to freeze intermittently. The only way to fix it once it starts showing this behaviour is to shut down Firefox.

The issue might be Firefox. It might be YouTube. It might be something else. I have done no troubleshooting. What I have done is started testing to see if the issue replicates in Vivaldi, my backup browser of choice. So far, it has not happened with Vivaldi. This makes me sad, because I want to keep using Firefox in Mint, but I also really don’t want to spend time troubleshooting this when a) I may spend a lot of time on it when I could be doing something productive or at least entertaining and b) I may find no actual solution. So this is bad news.

But I may do a little troubleshooting, at some point. Maybe.

File Explorer, how I hate thee

Eventually I’ll probably crash File Explorer by just opening it. It seems to crash a lot now, regardless of circumstance.

And I don’t troubleshoot it anymore, because there are so many possible reasons it might be crashing. I just live with it. Or spend more time in Linux Mint, whose file manager does not constantly crash (yet).

Has it really come to this, feeling fondness and nostalgia for Windows 95? I’m sure it was horrible in its own way, and I’ve just blocked the details, but still.

It’s “Technology Hates Me” Day!

At least I hope it’s a day and not, like, a week.

  1. My Canon camera took 78 photos today without issue. It then stopped taking photos, without explanation or apparent cause.
  2. While editing a few of the good photos taken today, Windows 11 hard-locked, forcing me to reboot it. This has happened several times since installing the major fall patch.
  3. TBD. There is still time before I turn in for the evening.

I have no idea what to do about the camera. For Windows 11, I am teaching it a lesson by rebooting into Linux Mint. It’s tough love, see.

Also, here is a cat having technical issues:

Why is Windows suddenly kind of slow?

I don’t know. It seems to have started in the past week and everything feels just sluggish enough to notice and, thus, be irritating.

I am typing this in Linux Mint, using Firefox, which remains snappy and responsive here in neckbeard land.

The slowness is probably some obscure bug in the major patch that came out this fall, or one of the billion processes always running in the background going wonky. You know, the kind of thing that is all but impossible to troubleshoot these days. We may be back to the days when you just reformat and start all over again.

Linux is getting closer to all I need for an operating system. Just a few more things and I can leave Windows behind after using it for the past hundred thousand years.

I just need to figure out how to play Diablo 3 in Mint. I mean, choose a good writing app. Yeah, that’s it.

One simple trick to make File Explorer in Windows 11 crash

It may not work for you, but it sure works for me!

  1. Start Windows 11.
  2. Open File Explorer.
  3. Open a tab in File Explorer.
  4. Repeat Step 3 until you have four or five tabs open.
  5. Wait a short time.
  6. Watch as File Explorer freezes, then crashes and restarts.

The good news is it usually restarts. If it doesn’t, press Win + R and enter explore.exe. This will restart File Explorer.

I will add this caveat: I run a lot of apps and background thingies, ranging from PowerToys to Discord, so who knows what dark magic is really making File Explorer upend itself, but whatever it is, it does not seem to like its new tabs being used.

I cannot confirm

I got presented with this dialog box in Windows 11 today. I can confirm it left me unsure on how to proceed.

(I also confirmed that at least the current version of Windows 11 I’m running gets a bit snaky with programs if you leave them open and running for long periods of time.)

A weird combo of nostalgia, inevitability and mild exasperation: Windows 11 deprecates the Control Panel (updated)

UPDATE, August 26, 2024: Microsoft has changed the wording of the note that resulted in the Ars Technica article. The update is in the same article link below, but for the link-averse, here's the before/after:

BEFORE: "The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience."

NOW: "Many of the settings in Control Panel are in the process of being migrated to the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience."

The story on Ars Technica: Microsoft formally deprecates the 39-year-old Windows Control Panel

It’s explained in the story that the time between announcing official deprecation of the Control Panel (now) and it actually being removed from Windows could span years. The current Settings app has a few things to recommend it:

  • Generally it looks nicer and more modern
  • It features breadcrumb navigation
  • The search (which you will probably need) works reasonably well in my experience

But it also falls short:

  • Many Control Panel settings are absent, especially ones for more advanced options
  • The categories are, I think, not as straightforward
  • System seems to be a dumping ground for “Where do we put this setting?”
  • It’s a single window, so you can’t have two of them open at the same time
  • The home page is filled with information pseudo-ads for Microsoft services, such as OneDrive, Microsoft 365 and more

The comments on the article are a mix of nostalgia and the expected nerd rage against the generally considered-to-be inferior Settings app. This comment resonated with me:

The reason it resonates is that I feel that same nostalgia when I see that mid-90s Windows GUI. I feel that GUI, with higher-resolution elements and a few tweaks, would look fine today and in some ways, even better than what we have with Windows 11 (also see my post on Windows GUI: Good, Bad and Pretty Ugly (Ranked)). The post also hits on an issue that has been happening since the Settings app was introduced in 2012 with Windows 8: A constant visual clash between Settings and Control Panel. Also, it’s been 12 years! Why is Microsoft still not finished moving over everything in the Control Panel to Settings1This is the mild exasperation referenced in the title? ~nerd rage intensifies~

Anyway, I actually rarely use Control Panel these days, as Windows mostly just works (and I use PowerToys, which probably helps), but the article did prompt me to pin Control Panel to the Start menu, just in case. Then I went in and looked through some of the options, pretending it was suddenly 1999 again and computers were cool. They were still tools, but they were also just kind of neat. To nerds, at least.

I have made my mouse pointer lime-coloured in Windows 11

I find, especially using light mode, it can be difficult where across the vastness of my two 27 inch monitors my mouse pointer is. I do have the feature enabled where if you tap the CTRL key twice it gets a nice spotlight on its location, but I wanted something that didn’t require extra effort on my part, because I am lazy.

I went into the Accessibility options and made it look like this:

I like it! It’s sort of hideous, yet delightful. And much easier to see.

As a bonus, I also get a lime green pointy hand.

Seeing the light (mode), Part 2

I have surprised myself by sticking with light mode on the PC for more than an entire day.

Thoughts:

  • Text does look a little crisper overall
  • Things aren’t too bright, but I could probably turn my monitor’s brightness down a little
  • Discord’s implementation is bad. The background for text is pure white (#FFFFFF), which is silly. You can fix it by changing the colour–by subscribing to Nitro™ for $10 a month. $120 per year to have a nice off-white is a bit much. File Explorer also uses pure white. I may see if I can change that specifically.
  • In fact, more apps than I realized seem to use pure white, so I’m guessing this is the “accepted” default for Windows 11’s Light Mode. Some other application colours:
    • TickTick: #FFFFFF
    • Diarium: #F0F3F9 for the sidebar, #F3F3F3 for the main calendar view, #F0F0F0 for the individual entries
    • Thunderbird: #FFFFFF
    • Proton Mail: #F8F8F6

For funsies, here are the above-mentioned shades of white:

I’ll stick with it for a little while longer and see how it goes. I am investigating other not-as-white-whites, using this site as reference: 122 Shades of White: Color Names, Hex, RGB, CMYK codes