PC Tech Thread

Is there a Windows version of gThumb or similar?

I want a photo gallery app that looks similar to this - allows you to see images in a folder with the thumbnails of the other images in the folder, and also browse folders

The Photos app is just rubbish.

Could try gthumb via WSL?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/gui-apps

Adobe Bridge?

Picasa 😄

Any thoughts why, on my win10 work laptop, pages take ages to load on Firefox compared to Chrome (both at home and in the office)?

Same add-ins for both (although still slow on private browsing with no add-ins).

Right click -> inspect -> network. Then force refresh (Ctrl+f5) and see what is causing the sloe load.

sloe load

In a preserving jar topped up with gin, I hope

Cheers, I think looking at here for instance it just seems to take ages loading all the grafana stuff (although it doesn't try until nearly 15 seconds in?, I'm not quite sure what that is telling me)?

Other pages seem to have the similar not loading anything for a while issue I think, I may be completely misinterpreting that though.

1 Attachment

Still looking? Think there one called Iini or something, lemme check…

https://iina.io/

mac thread >>>>>

Recommended 'net sites for general Windows geekery?
I know the Mac quite well, but not my personal work PC. Probably need to learn how to tweak it before ChatAI does it for me.

I returned to Windows about 2 years ago after about 15 years not touching it but living in Linux instead. My general conclusion is that Linux is the best OS but has the poorest applications, Mac ecosystem has the best hardware but the worst OS and average applications, Windows is the middling OS but the best applications - but Windows with WSLv2 means you get all of the best of Windows with most of the capabilities of Linux making it an unbeatable productivity, gaming, audio/visual, and engineering environment.

Since I went full-in on Windows about a year ago I've focused on Windows 11 Pro as it uses local admin and I don't use the Microsoft Login stuff, and it has WSLv2 and Remote Desktop which I find useful.

The key things I do to a Windows machine:

1. How to use Windows Defender well: https://0ut3r.space/2022/03/06/windows-defender/

2. How to stop Edge putting a shortcut on the desktop: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-update-policies#createdesktopshortcutdefault

3. A useful approach to debloating (I use the approach and don't just mindlessly nuke everything): https://gabrielsieben.tech/2023/01/02/debloating-windows-10-with-one-command-and-no-scripts/ - avoid removing Windows Store, it is hard to reinstall if you later decide you need it (I got carried away once and have a laptop that I can't install anything on!)

4. First task on a new Windows PC: Spend an hour going through every possible option in Settings to tweak to a more sane set of defaults

5. WSLv2 ( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/compare-versions ) provides a wonderful safety hatch back to a Linux. I don't think I could survive on Windows without Linux just being there and without being able to launch a Linux GUI directly inside Windows

I don't really do much else - it's just a "remove the very obvious bloat, config away Cortana and all tracking and things, dial Defender to max (including which apps can read from which directories)" and that's about it.

This is interesting.

Grafana Faro is an experiment I'm trying - it reports JavaScript errors back to me, and normally I'm blind on those so if I can start seeing them perhaps I can fix them.

But it should be 100% async and not impact page loading at all.

Do you know how to record a HAR file? https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408828867098-Generating-a-HAR-file-for-troubleshooting

Could you make a HAR file for a page that loaded slowly and send that to me (via DM or email to lfgss@david.kitchen) - do not post it in this thread as it will include your cookies including any authentication.

The HAR file will allow me to see whether network is the issue.

If it isn't network, then it's going to be something in the client such as config or an add-on. I'm on Firefox too and do not see any speed delays or loading issues.

From a very first glance, I actually think the network is fine and you're more likely to have an add-on that is delaying the page being painted / rendered rather than any delay in the server processing or the client receiving the page. The HAR file will at least confirm it's not the server or network.

WSLv2

How did I not know about this? I've been dicking around with old oooold binaries from a Berkeley university ftp server from the early 00s to give me *nix like commands and utilities.

Or Cygwin. Is this similar?

This is basically full Linux kernel, virtualised but integrated in such a way that you barely see the startup time, it doesn't impact battery life, and you have a Linux command line (for the Linux VM) that can also access Windows. Additionally you can launch a Linux GUI app from that command line and the GUI will appear within the Windows desktop environment as if it were running within Windows, i.e. I can type wireshark in the Linux command line and Wireshark UI will appear in Windows.

It is so good that most of the dev work on Microcosm in the past couple of years I have done from WSLv2, including compiling the binaries and shipping them to a Linux running on bare metal - meaning it is perfectly byte compatible for the entire build tool chain and the output - this is a Linux.

I like the sound of a seamless VM - I struggle with running *nix VMs in windows in a way that doesn't take acrobatics to share and synchronise files and the like.

How is it at reading e.g. ext4 file systems?

How is it at reading e.g. ext4 file systems?

Flawless - it is a Linux.

Noice. I'm sold. When can you come round and install it?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

From a Powershell in Windows: wsl --install

That is it. That's all there is to it.

Once installed, pick the Linux you want. The default they give you is Ubuntu but you can pick others if you please:

PS C:\Windows\System32> wsl --list --online
The following is a list of valid distributions that can be installed.
Install using 'wsl.exe --install <Distro>'.

NAME                                   FRIENDLY NAME
Ubuntu                                 Ubuntu
Debian                                 Debian GNU/Linux
kali-linux                             Kali Linux Rolling
Ubuntu-18.04                           Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Ubuntu-20.04                           Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Ubuntu-22.04                           Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
OracleLinux_8_5                        Oracle Linux 8.5
OracleLinux_7_9                        Oracle Linux 7.9
SUSE-Linux-Enterprise-Server-15-SP4    SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4
openSUSE-Leap-15.4                     openSUSE Leap 15.4
openSUSE-Tumbleweed                    openSUSE Tumbleweed

And of course if Arch is your thing, just go onto Github and you find something https://github.com/jrcharney/ArchWSLPlusPlus

Cheers for the response. I've emailed a couple of HAR files through to you.

Taken a look - you have something on your system that is pausing the request connections.

If I had to suspect: You have an antivirus program or something like an extension, it is only delaying .js files (hence my suspicion on antivirus -but anything that wants to interfere with JavaScript is an option, i.e. an adblocker).

The HAR file showed all of the network communication was done in milliseconds.

But a client side (Grafana Faro) trace shows me the page took 10.7 seconds, and shows me why.

The why is that every .js was frozen in the client itself for precisely 9 seconds.

I have no idea why - but the best guess is that you have antivirus or an extension or a network proxy on your side, that is ultimately choosing to hold these requests for a short time before fully releasing them to the browser.

As a consequence of them being JavaScript files, the browser cannot paint the screen and they block/delay the page load.

These are the rabbit-holes I am looking for. Thanks.

Cheers. I get the same in Private Browsing so assume it shouldn't be an extension. It's a work laptop with a few anti-virus things installed so guess that is the most likely culprit, although strange that it doesn't do the same with Chrome..

Oooh... likely based on protocol.

Chrome will be using HTTP/3 with LFGSS which the AV may not be able to make sense of. Firefox will still be using HTTP/2 which AV will know about.

Can confirm those protocols btw, https://www.lfgss.com/cdn-cgi/trace shows the protocol used.