No working system is ideal, not even Ubuntu. Whether or not you are curious about productiveness or simply ease of use, right here are some things that Ubuntu ought to steal from Home windows to win the OS options arms race.

5

Home windows’ Focus Classes

In case you work on computer systems, you recognize precisely how distracting it may be. The incessant stream of dings, beeps, flashing lights, and pop-ups could make it really feel such as you’re at a carnival quite than sitting at a pc.

Microsoft has carried out an excellent job implementing Focus Session on Home windows, and it’s one thing that Ubuntu ought to take inspiration from.

Focus Classes enables Do Not Disturb (which blocks most notifications), disables Taskbar badges, and prevents the Taskbar icons from flashing.

It additionally permits you to set a Pomodoro timer that may periodically remind you to take a break from no matter it’s you are engaged on.

You can too set objectives, sync up your timer along with your to-do record, and combine Spotify, for those who work higher with music.

4

Passkey Assist

Passkeys, that are a alternative (partially) for passwords, are going to turn into more and more common going ahead.

Nevertheless, Ubuntu has no native solution to deal with them in any respect.

The mixing in Home windows is very simple. As soon as you’ve got arrange Home windows Hiya—a prerequisite for Passkeys on Home windows—you will begin seeing prompts to create a passkey everytime you go to a web site that helps them. It even integrates with non-Edge browsers, like Firefox.

You may handle your passkeys by urgent Home windows+i, then navigating to Accounts > Passkeys.

3

Superior Window Snapping Choices

It is within the title—Home windows. The Home windows working system’s window-snapping characteristic is incredible, intuitive, and succesful, particularly on Home windows 11.

As with most working methods, you possibly can drag a window to both aspect of the display to snap it to the sting, however the variations do not finish there. In case you drag a window to the nook of the display, it will measurement the window to take up just one quarter of your display.

From there, you possibly can snap the remainder of your home windows to every take up one quarter of the display, or fill one half with a tall window and fill the remaining nook with one other smaller window.

In case you hover over the maximize button (the sq. icon between the decrease and shut buttons), you will see all of the default window configurations accessible.

Ubuntu has fundamental window snapping, however it would not work as seamlessly because the snapping in Home windows.

PowerToys (software program authored by Microsoft for Home windows) additionally introduces a characteristic referred to as “Fancy Zones” that will increase your choices even additional.

2

The Home windows 11 Recreation Bar

The Recreation Bar current in Home windows 11 brings collectively video and audio recording, plus the power to take screenshots. It additionally has a refreshed UI, which is a particular enchancment over the outdated model.

Recreation Bar is not precisely distinctive; different apps, like OBS Broadcaster Software, can do most of the identical issues.

Nevertheless, there’s something extraordinarily handy about having it built-in straight into the working system and situated multi function place.

1

Clipboard Historical past: Home windows’ Underused Function

Your clipboard is the place every little thing you’ve got copied is saved briefly earlier than you paste it elsewhere.

Among the best, most underutilized options in Home windows is clipboard historical past. Because the title suggests, clipboard historical past retains a working log of the belongings you copy so as to pull from it later. You may press Home windows+V to open it. If it is not working, head to Settings > System > Clipboard to allow it.

It additionally shops the pictures you copy; not simply textual content.

It would not sound prefer it’d be an enormous deal, however throughout my regular workday, I take advantage of the characteristic dozens of instances.

Copy-pasting is an important a part of each digital workflow, and Clipboard Historical past is the little characteristic I might miss essentially the most if switched to Ubuntu completely.

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None of those options are precisely groundbreaking. It is not like Ubuntu fully lacks large, mission-critical options. Nevertheless, when contemplating switching to a different working system, the little issues make an enormous distinction.