AltSnap — A little bit of Linux in Windows

Topic

New Reply

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen If you are a dual operating system user, specifically Linux and Windows, you know how frustrating it is to hold
[See the full post at: AltSnap — A little bit of Linux in Windows]

7 users thanked author for this post.

Norio, SueW, Seattle27, fisher75, rc primak, abbodi86, DLivesInTexas

Reply | Quote

Replies

Installed it, tried it, removed it.

Ok, it is clever, and I might well use it but … I really can’t stand it when windows “snap” to a position of their choice, so I have this disabled in Windows. There appears to be no way to prevent Alt-snap doing it, and it doesn’t just do it to the screen edges, but any other window edge that is nearby.

Reply | Quote

Ubuntu-Unity user here. Radiance Theme, Humanity Icon Set. So a lot of this comment relates to how Linux handles the features found in this program, not how the program functions in Windows 11.

Thanks for this article — I learned something new about Linux today! However…

There’s no need to press the Alt key when in the title bar area of an active window in my Linux — just left-click and the crosshairs icon (not a hand) is there for moving the window. Sure, YMMV. The Alt key is needed elsewhere inside the window.

Again, hold down the Alt key, but this time hold and drag with your right mouse button anywhere on the window to resize it (see Figure 2).

With my mouse, it’s the middle mouse button (the wheel), not the right-hand mouse button. YMMV.

Also, when in the center region of a window, the Alt-center-click combo does nothing.

Right-click in my Linux environment is reserved for the usual right-click menu items, even with the Alt (Super) key pressed. Again, YMMV.

For Alt-left clicking — It’s not a pointing hand in my icon set (Humanity). It’s a cross-hairs “plus-sign”. User-selected theming is common in Liniux, less so in Windows. Yes, YMMV.

So this tool is useful. I have had a version of Fotoxx, a Linux-only photo editing program. The developer has a huge display, so the application window he’s created goes off the screen at the bottom. The alt-click feature might keep this from becoming an issue. But in the end I had to revise the scaling on the monitor (under Display Settings) for this issue to go away. So Alt-Click isn’t a panacea for oversized application windows. Still, YMMV.

More so than in Windows, if you really want to mess things up in Linux, just start changing random items in configuration files. This is guaranteed to lead to trouble for most folks. But editing Windows .ini files carries the same risks.

In Linux, we also have several tweaking tools with GUIs to help us mess things up! 🙂 Plus the Command Line terminal.

-- rc primak

Reply | Quote

Sounds like a great utility, but it will not run on my desktop computer (Win 11). After double-clicking the EXE, neither the installation program nor the portable version gave any indication whatsoever, of running. Nothing in the system tray, no warning from Windows Defender. Nada. Tried on my Win10 laptop, and it worked exactly as expected. I am stumped. Any advice how to determine what’s blocking it from running?

Reply | Quote

Might be blocked because it’s an exe file from the internet. Right click on it, choose properties and at the bottom of the general tab there should be a tick box to allow it to run. If that’s not it, I don’t know what it might be.

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

Reply | Quote

The was exactly the problem. Thanks for the solution. Next task is to train the muscle memory to use the Alt key.

Reply | Quote

I use Linux Mint and Windows 10. I use two separate hard drives, with a hard drive power switch. I power the computer down, push a couple of buttons, and power the computer up. So the two operating systems are completely independent of each other.

Actually, I have a third hard drive – my data drive. It stays on all the time, so that it is available in both situations. Actually, I would like for it to be available in both situations; but for some reason, Windows doesn’t see the drive. (Maybe because it is formatted for Linux?)

But that is a question for another thread, because I don’t want to hijack this thread.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

Reply | Quote