I got into programming before I got into Linux – consequently, many of my earlier programs were targeted for the windows platform. I want to showcase those apps in this post. I no longer use them – but if anyone finds any of these useful, it wont go to waste.
I wrote many programs in my Window days. But most of them are useful only to me – its pointless to list them here. These are the list of programs that others might find interesting.
This post is a part of a series I am doing on Windows. The other posts in this series so far are…
- 3 Windows Speed Tips from a Linux User
- Windows Hacks: ‘The Escape’
- Using Linux for a better Windows Experience
Command Line Apps
I had an affection for the Command Line even when I was in windows. Due to the lack of tools in DOS, I created a few DOS tools myself. Most of them are done in C++…
bd – ‘dir’ command replacement
BD is a `dir` replacement. This program displays the contents of a specified folder in a colorful and more understandable way. BD displays files of different types in different colours, letting you see at a glance which files are executable, which are documents, directories etc.
BD helps to cross the boundary between the starkness of DOS and the color of Windows and is a perfect utility for anyone who is experienced with Windows but wishes to start working in DOS.
Completely Free Softwares
Boot Booster
Boot Booster is a program that tries to put the booting time of the computer to good use. It can log the booting time, display a joke or an inspirational message that will change at every booting, display any message, display any reminders you have set etc. Boot Booster can be configured to log the booting time, shutdown time and the time the session lasted etc. Works only in Windows 95/98. It will NOT work on anything newer.
I don’t expect anyone will find this useful. But at the time I created it, it was one of my favorite applications. I have created other apps to parse the result of its log and create some ‘interesting’ graphics.
Batch Programming Helpers
People into DOS will also be into batch programming. I wrote quite a few batch scripts to automate stuff. Since the batch scripting language had very little features, I wrote utilities to improve its abilities…
Batch ToolKit
Batch ToolKit is a collection of 5 programs intended to make batch programming a bit more feature rich…
If you are in windows and you use Batch in a non-trivial way, please switch to linux – you are going to love the features that is provided by bash(Linux shell scripting language). Then after a while, you will hate that too – and will use higher level languages. And thus, a programmer is born.
GUI Applications – Tcl/Tk
I also did some Tcl/Tk programming in Windows to create GUI applications. I continue that even today – as Tcl/Tk is well supported in Linux(even though Tk apps looks very bad in linux). All the Tcl apps I created are available on the Tcl/Tk page.
I enjoyed programming in the Tcl language that I created a tutorial for Tcl/Tk. Later I create the Hello Script for Tcl(for quick reference).