win2k is a set of handcrafted configs for setting up a complete dev environment on Windows.

It makes developing on Windows much more pleasant for CLI lovers.

✨ Features

• Can set up a complete dev environment within minutes
• Full featured native CLI dev environment on Powershell (no WSL!)
• Tiling window management with glazewm
• Statusbar support with zebar
• Shiny and extensible prompt with oh-my-posh and posh2k
• Powerful personalized editing with nvim2k
• More!!

Setup

🚀 Installation

• Enable remote script execution (Only needed one time)

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser

• Install scoop

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri https://get.scoop.sh | Invoke-Expression

• Install git (7zip and aria2 to help with scoop installations) if you haven't already

scoop install aria2 7zip git

• Clone win2k

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/2kabhishek/win2k

• Run setup in Admin mode (Press Win + x and select Terminal (Admin))

cd win2k
.\setup.ps1

This will install all necessary packages, modules and setup symlinks for you.

If setup runs into errors, try running the command in admin mode again or run the command from setup.ps1 manually.

After setup is done, run glazewm.exe to start the GlazeWM - also right click on it on your system tray and enable 'Run on system startup'.

💻 Usage

Windows Terminal

If you have windows terminal installed from the store, please uninstall it, this setup uses the windows-terminal package from scoop.

Git

It is recommended to setup git and GitHub before anything else.

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "your@email.com"

git config --global commit.gpgSign false #Disable GPG signing

gh auth login #Login to github

If you want to use GPG signing check this

Neovim

Next I would recommend setting up nvim2k

• Clone the repo in a appropriate location

git clone https://github.com/2kabhishek/nvim2k

• Setup symlink

New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\nvim" -Target "$PWD\nvim2k" -Force

PowerToys

I recommend using PowerToys to add some keybindings using the Keyboard Manager, for example:

• Remap Caps Lock to Esc for quick access in vim
• Remap Win + q to send Alt + F4 for closing current window, using the Remap Shortcuts

I also use the PowerToys Run launcher mapped to Win + Space

Tiling

GlazeWM configs here

Status Bar

Zebar configs here

Fonts

If you want to try out other fonts, you can also use oh-my-posh to install fonts

Just run oh-my-posh font install in an Admin window and select the font of your choice.

More Tools

I have intentionally kept the default list of packages to bare essentials.

If you want any other tools you can install them with scoop or winget.

# Install VS Code
scoop install code
# Install winget
scoop install winget

You can also search for packages using scoop search name.

Aliases

Bash aliases from dots2k can be reused in PowerShell by generating a compatible file.

# Run from the win2k root
.\config\PowerShell\Generate-Aliases.ps1

This reads dots2k/config/shell/aliases.sh and generates config/PowerShell/aliases.gen.ps1 with Bash-Alias calls that the PowerShell profile can dot-source.

You can also pass custom paths:

.\config\PowerShell\Generate-Aliases.ps1 -Source path\to\aliases.sh -Output path\to\output.ps1

Re-run the generator whenever you update aliases.sh.

Other Configs

For most tools I'm symlinking configs over from my main dots2k.

You can do the same or plugin your own.

Behind The Code

🌈 Inspiration

I find working on Windows somewhat unpleasant, WSL although tries and fixes it, but it felt constrained.

That's why I decided to set up a dev environment using native windows tooling.

💡 Challenges/Learnings

• The main challenge was to figure out all the pieces of this puzzle and solving it.
• Learned a lot about Powershell and did quite some scripting with it.
• Learned more about the Windows ecosystem, different environment variables, configs etc.
• Had lots of fun!

🧰 Tooling

• dots2k — Dev Environment
• nvim2k — Personalized Editor
• qute2k — Personalized Browser
• Powershell
• Windows Terminal

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