what i do when i reinstall windows

this is one of those blog posts where it’s mostly a note-to-self.

unfortunately, i find windows to be the least-worst option for my workstation. as running windows usually goes, i am often forced to reinstall it from scratch. here is what i do to reduce the pain:

essentials

ninite

i get a bunch of stuff from Ninite - it’s a single installer that can install lots of software with little interaction:

• Chrome (not my primary browser, but i still need it for testing)
• Discord
• Dropbox (for storing my music production / 3d art projects)
• 7-Zip
• VLC
• Spotify
• FileZilla
• Visual Studio Code (my primary text editor)
• Krita
• ShareX
• WizTree
• Steam

ssh key

windows comes with OpenSSH out-of-the-box now, which is really awesome. i grab my workstation’s ssh key from a backup (so that i don’t need to generate a new key whenever i reinstall windows every, like, 3 months)

tailscale

tailscale pretty much powers my personal infrastructure. i can access all of my machines via their hostnames using MagicDNS. it’s great.

development tools

dev drive

usually this is auto-detected on install, but I have a ReFS “Dev Drive” partition that persists across Windows installations where I keep source code and package caches (as well as some tools for my PATH like ffmpeg, cmake)

git for windows

• download installer from git-scm.com
• non-default: external OpenSSH
• non-default: core.autocrlf “checkout as-is, commit as-is”
• git config --global init.defaultBranch main
• git config --global core.editor vim
• git config --global --add safe.directory $dev_drive
• don’t forget user.name and user.email

rust

• i use rustup. it’s a toolchain manager for Rust.
• it will also ask if you want to install Visual Studio Community for the MSVC toolchain. you want this. thank you rustup

node.js

i use volta. it’s a toolchain manager for Node.js. it’s great. “rustup for JavaScript”

1. run the installer
2. volta install node@lts
3. you’re done

deno

i just install deno from deno.land

$ irm "https://deno.land/install.ps1" | iex
$ # you're done

python

i use rye. it’s great. “rustup for python”.

$ # turn on global shims!!
$ rye config --set-bool behavior.global-python=true
$ # defaults to latest:
$ python --version
Python 3.12.0
$ # look, any version you want!
$ python +3.8 --version
Python 3.8.18
$ # install tools from pip:
$ rye install yt-dlp
$ # get them globally:
$ yt-dlp --version
2023.12.30

unfortunately updating a tool requires rye uninstall $x; rye install $x

sometimes I want pytorch with CUDA in a project managed by rye, in this case i just need to add a snippet to pyproject.toml:

[[tool.rye.sources]]
name = "pytorch"
url = "https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu118"

audio tools

there’s no way around how much reinstalling audio tools sucks.

i install:

• Ableton Live (for music production)
• Bitwig Studio (for plugin development)

for plugins, i get these for free:

• Vital
• MeldaProduction MFreeFXBundle
• Empy (codec emulation): https://github.com/ArdenButterfield/Empy

i use my licensed versions of:

• Kilohearts Ultimate (Phase Plant, Snap Heap, Multipass, etc)
• Rift by Minimal Audio
• MeldaProduction MMorph, MVocoder
• imagiro piano, autochroma
• Serum, SerumFX via Splice