Windows 11 explorer performance, strangeness

Recently purchased Win11 laptop.  Installed many applications for development and research and found a few things.  

Explorer Tab

22H2 version is supposed to provide Explorer tab.  For some, it's still not enabled, and ViveTool helps to enable the feature.  However, for some reasons, Win11 explorer already slow, and after enabling the feature, I experienced some strange issues, such as stability, hanging, explorer process restarts itself, slowness.

To enable it, download ViveTool: https://github.com/thebookisclosed/ViVe/releases,

vivetool /enable /id:39145991 /variant:2
vivetool /enable /id:37634385 /variant:2
vivetool /enable /id:36354489 /variant:2

See:

• https://www.windowslatest.com/2022/09/23/how-to-enable-tabs-in-file-explorer-on-windows-11-22h2-build-22621/
• https://pureinfotech.com/enable-tabs-file-explorer-windows-11/
• https://www.xda-developers.com/how-use-vivetool-enable-features-windows-11/

After disabling it, explorer is more stable and faster:

vivetool /disable /id:39145991
vivetool /disable /id:37634385
vivetool /disable /id:36354489

Explorer Performance

• Disable Theme Service in services control panel.
• Configure Performance setting.

Afterward, explorer is a lot faster. 

Losing Focus

This bugged me the most and had to spend a lot of time to fix.  While typing, the application loses focus briefly and randomly and gets the focus again.  Many postings/articles shows to disable "Focus Assit" feature, but there is no such after 22H2 update, and fiddling around with Focus Assist and Do Not Disturb did not help.  

It was due to WSLg - it was making RDP connection frequently.

• https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/mstscexe-stealing-focus/f9acb6fd-3c95-4e22-8f40-dc41dffbb178
• https://x410.dev/cookbook/wsl/disabling-wslg-or-using-it-together-with-x410/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/uvvf2k/mstscexe_steals_focus/

To find which application has the focus, use these:

• https://www.happydroid.com/focus
• https://github.com/JocysCom/FocusLogger

See this also:

• https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-prevent-programs-from-stealing-focus-in-windows-2624453

CMD window pops up and goes away at login

It started after I played around with some settings.  After reading this article, https://appuals.com/command-prompt-pops-up-and-closes-windows-11/, using SysInternals Process Monitor, I was able to find a couple of "strange" processes.  It's really my fault though.  

In Accessibility setting, I enabled "Java Access Bridge".  This was the cause of the CMD window problem.  Disable it.

• DISM repair, https://appuals.com/use-dism-repair-windows-10/
• SysInternals
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/system-information
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

RAPS.exe (SmartByte)

Also found that RAPS.exe process was constantly spawning.  This is from Dell computer's "CinemaStream" feature I enabled.  It's made by SmartByte company.  Uninstalling this resolved the issue, and slightly faster internet speed.

• https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-cinema/cp/dell-cinema

Use Taskfile for building Go code

Developers first used Makefile for Java, many years ago.  Then ANT came, and then settled with Maven.  Gradle came out, but Maven is still dominant.

With Go, developers using Makefile, saying the same thing when Makefile was used for Java - "It's good enough."

After some searching, found taskfile, written in Go.  It's easier and better than Makefile in many ways, and it's platform independent.  As Java building moved to Maven from ANT, there might be more advanced building tool in the future for Go, however, for now, Taskfile is a better alternative to makefile.

Taskfile, https://taskfile.dev/

Code, https://github.com/go-task/task

[Note] Chromebook Linux VM

It creates a user.  Change its password:

$ sudo su

# passwd <username>

SSH to Chromebook Linux VM ("CLV" from here for short):

1. Enable sshd in CLV.
   
2. ssh from CLV to another system (e.g. Linux, Mac with SSHD set up) with tunneling.
   
3. From linux/mac (or any system with SSHD), ssh to the tunneling port.

$ sudo su

# cd /etc/ssh
# rm sshd_not_meant_to_be_run
# vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Define/uncomment these:

Port 2020
AllowAgentForwarding yes
AllowTcpForwarding yes

Restart sshd service:

$ sudo systemctl start ssh
$ sudo systemctl enable ssh

From CLV, ssh to the target machine to establish the tunneling:

$ ssh -f -N -T -R 2020:localhost:2020 <userid>@<target machine>

From the target machine, you can SSH to CLV

$ ssh -p 2020 <CLV username>@localhsot

NOTE: if the Chromebook is on battery, it may go to sleep and break the connection while you're connect to it via SSH.

IPFS, DAO

I've been feeling uncomfortable about the current heavily centralized "Web 2.0".  There are definitely benefits and trade-offs.  There are many articles about this, so not going to repeat/list here.  This note contains just a brief summary and pointers.

"Web3", although it's still early, but the concept and the technology are solid and good to experiment now.  It's still too complex for non techie folks, or would anyone really care.  It's very interesting how all these different ideas, concepts and technologies have come together, built, and (will be) used.

• Web 1.0 - nobody called it "1.0" back then. It was the dawn of the internet for the general public.  People and companies started to build web sites.
• Web 2.0 - centralized internet. Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc – they own people's data, know about the people more than themselves.
• Web3 - decentralize data and internet.

There are many hypes and interesting technologies for web3, but these are quite interesting:

• IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System
• DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization

I don't feel too strongly about cryptocurrency or NFT, but with metaverse, and for decentralized data/internet, they seem to be good tools and are needed.

I have been thinking about the idea of decentralized data, network, and organization for a while, so I was very excited when I found out about IPFS and DAO. They are not new concepts nor the first attempt to realize the ideas, but this time, it looks pretty good.

I am pretty sure  IPFS, DAO, NFT, and multiverse…all these will look and work very differently in 10 years.  Maybe it will be called something else, and decentralization will be there for sure.  It just needed to be more robust and easier to understand and use.