this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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So I was setting up this new laptop, and after security updates I went on cleaning the trash through Powershell, and after removing all unwanted packages I was going to let a note on the desktop and there was no Notepad in the context menu... oops, I messed up I thought, I must have removed stuff I shouldn't, so just to be safe I did a factory reset and this time read very carefully every package before removing, and again no Notepad! And I notice there was no Paint nor Calculator either... so turn out new Win11 is shipped with Outlook, Maps, Solitaire Collection, People (whatever the hell that is), and even some IE, Zune and Skype legacy packages, but not with Notepad?! You actually have to download it from Microsoft Store... and now they all come with Copilot lol
Anyway, this sounds like a great opportunity to look for some FOSS alternatives!
What do you guys use and recommend?

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[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Notepad: Notepad++ or Visual Studio Code. Or if you like terminal windows: https://github.com/microsoft/edit

Paint: https://www.pinta-project.com/ seems to have Windows builds.

Calculator: https://qalculate.github.io/ is the best I know of.

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Is vs coidum available for windows?

[–] PanArab@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

VS Code isn't what I would call lightweight. It is 500MB of Chromium bloat doing a good job of pretending to be an extensible text editor.

That said, I learned to love it and I actually use Cursor.

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was asking, but spelled wrong if vs codium was avaialbe for windows. It's vs code without all the ms crap added to it.

[–] PanArab@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

Sorry for not answering your question. Yes it is available: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases