Get Exactly What You Want With Arched Windows

When your home has arched windows, you may find it a daunting task to discover the perfect way to cover your window. Because of the odd shape, you may think it difficult to cover in a way that will be both beautiful and functional. However, the plethora of options available allow you to find something that is perfect for your arched window. As a result, the hard part consists of deciding what style you like more.

Discovering Your Choices

If you have really beautiful arched windows and you don’t necessarily want to cover the arch, but you do want the rest of the window to have covering, you can get just that. A great option, for example, consists of using shutters.

Shutters can be used on all the windows and of course can be opened and closed easily–allowing you to control how much light is let through. Finally, you can customize them in a way that works perfectly for your arched window.

Another great idea is to use a valance to create two distinct sections, for the arch and the rest of your window. This type of treatment will leave the top of the window open so that light can flow in without any restriction.

Some people, of course, appreciate the architecture of the arched window but still need it to fully block light when necessary. In that case, draped around the windows that range from sheer to opaque can do the job perfectly.

Finally, if you have arched windows located in a variety of rooms within your home, you can get each window treatment to be different in order to achieve both the look and the function you want. For example, if you have an arched window in your bathroom, you may want to use a roman shade. This will allow you to let light flow throughout the day, but when you are soaking in the tub, you can lower the shade and have all the privacy you want at night.

The Benefits of Going Custom

If you have arched windows in your home, it’s a great idea to get custom coverings. This way, you will be assured that you will have the absolute best possible fit for this unique shape. From fabric colors to patterns and texture, a lot of detail work that can go into window treatments.

If you find that you don’t know what option would best fit your arched windows, don’t be afraid of seeking help. You may know that you want the window covered, but the arch portion to remain uncovered and you don’t know how to achieve that look. Professionals will be able to guide you through the process in order to get exactly what you want.

Additionally, professionals can help you find the right window treatment for each room in your home. Especially if you have arched windows in your bedroom, you may lean more towards having them fully covered in order to provide you with the least amount of light possible when you are trying to sleep.

Since the ancient Romans learned to build arches, the arch has been an important part of architecture. Arched windows are not only a beautiful focal point in a room, but they are capable of letting in a lot of natural light.

Of course, it’s important to know that everyone’s taste is different, and an arched window treatment that you see elsewhere may not be the perfect fit for you and your home. By consulting with professionals, you’ll be able to not only get the best fit to your particular windows but you’ll also get treatments that are made specifically for your windows. So, embrace your arched windows and get exactly what you want.

Author: Bruce Bernstein

Bruce Bernstein is the owner of Sunshine Drapery. Sunshine has showrooms in Chesterfield and Sunset Hills and the corporate office/workroom facility located in Maryland Heights, Missouri. Sunshine services residential and commercial clients for window coverings and more with complimentary appointments.

Which version of Windows operating system am I running?

Find operating system info in Windows 10

To find out which version of Windows your device is running, press the Windows logo key + R, type winver in the Open box, and then select OK.

Here’s how to learn more:

Select the Start button > Settings > System > About .

Under Device specifications > System type, see if you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows.

Under Windows specifications, check which edition and version of Windows your device is running.

Related links

If you’re having a problem with activation, see Activate in Windows 10.

If you forgot the password you use to sign in to Windows devices or email, see How to reset your Microsoft password.

For info about updating Windows, see Windows Update: FAQ.

Find operating system info in Windows 8.1 or Windows RT 8.1

To find out which version of Windows your device is running, press the Windows logo key + R, type winver in the Open box, and then select OK.

If your device is running Windows 8.1 or Windows RT 8.1, here’s how to learn more:

If you’re using a touch device, swipe in from the right edge of the screen, tap Settings, and then tap Change PC settings. Continue to step 3.

If you’re using a mouse, point to the lower-right corner of the screen, move the mouse pointer up, click Settings, and then click Change PC settings.

Select PC and devices > PC info.

Under Windows you’ll see which edition and version of Windows your device is running.

Under PC > System type you’ll see if you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows.

Related links

If you’re having a problem with activation, see Activate Windows 7 or Windows 8.1

If you forgot the password you use to sign in to Windows devices or email, see How to reset your Microsoft password.

For info about updating Windows, see Windows Update: FAQ.

Find operating system info in Windows 7

Select the Start button, type Computer in the search box, right-click on Computer, and then select Properties.

Under Windows edition, you’ll see the version and edition of Windows that your device is running.

Support for Windows 7 ended on January 14, 2020

We recommend you move to a Windows 10 PC to continue to receive security updates from Microsoft.

Related links

If you’re having a problem with activation, see Activate Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.

If you forgot the password you use to sign in to Windows devices or email, see How to reset your Microsoft password.

For info about updating Windows, see Windows Update: FAQ.

I installed Arch Linux, now what?

The last time we talked about Arch Linux, I walked you through the install process. However, while your system is totally usable, there are still a few things we have to do, so we’re far from being done.

Stop Windows from messing up the system clock

This is a subtle, but very annoying problem and can drive you insane if you don’t realize what’s going on. Let’s say you live in an area that has a time zone of GMT-4 and it’s 2PM in your local time. This means that in a GMT area it’s 6PM, so that’s a no brainer, right?

So you set the time to 2pm on your Linux partition and live happily ever after. Then you boot windows for two hours of gaming. It’s now 4PM. Time to get back to work, so you go to your Linux partition and it says it’s 12PM. How come?

The problem lies in the different ways both operating systems handle the computer’s clock time. In Linux, the system is configured to use the UTC standard -that is, to use GMT with no offset- and then apply the offset at the OS level, so your computer’s clock has to actually be set to 8PM so that Linux applies that -4 offset itself so it can correctly display 4PM.

Windows, on the other hand, assumes that the computer’s clock is using the local standard, so it will keep “correcting” the discrepancies.

You could use the local time on both, but the correct practice is to have the hardware clock running in UTC and have both operating systems apply their respective offsets.

I didn’t mention any of this in the last part, so let’s take care of this now. Boot into Arch and fire up a terminal window, then enter

Now reboot into Windows and click on start > run. Then type regedit and press enter. Now navigate the left pane tree until you reach this route:

Right click on TimeZoneInformation , click on new > qword and enter RealTimeIsUniversal as the name and 1 as the value. If Windows complains about the clock needing to resync, let it do it. That’s it, now your computer’s clock is on UTC and both Linux and Windows correctly apply their offsets.

System maintenance

Did you notice that’s Arch Linux has no version number? The ISO file has a creation date at most, but that’s about it.

That’s because Arch Linux is what is called a rolling release, which is just fancy words for “WE USE THE LATEST PACKAGES FOR EVERYTHING. ”. This has one major implication: Let’s say you installed your system today and got the latest packages of everything. Then a few months down the road, you decide you need this new shiny thing so you do sudo pacman -S newShinyThing , only to get a bunch of 404 errors. How come?

When you installed Arch for the first time, it downloaded a database with the data of the available packages. As time goes on, that information changes, so your system thinks that the package you want is called shiny-new-thing-1.5 , but the repositories moved on to the new bleeding edge version and now they have shiny-new-thing-1.6 , effectively rendering your package database obsolete.

The solution is to update your system regularly with the -Syu switch:

• -S stands for sync, which is just a fancy way of saying “install”.
• y stands for… well, for nothing, but it updates the contents of your package database. For you Ubuntu users, this is the equivalent of running apt-get update .
• Finally, the u switch stands for upgrade the whole system.

All three should be used every time you want to install a package. So to recap, if you want to install that new shiny thing, use sudo pacman -Syu new-shiny-thing .

Wait a second. If the y updates the package metadata, wouldn’t it be enough to issue the -Sy switch? I’m glad you noticed. This makes perfect sense, but it creates a very big problem. Let’s say you install shiny-new-thing and it depends on some library to work. That library will get installed or upgraded to the latest version. If you have another application that depends on the older version of the library, congratulations, you just broke that other application. This is called a partial upgrade and it’s a big no no in the Arch world. The way to avoid this is to ALWAYS. ISSUE. A. FULL. UPGRADE. EVERY. TIME.

Still, some packages, like PostgreSQL, don’t play nice even with new versions of themselves, which is why you should get in the habit of checking Arch’s website at least once a week and keep an eye on the Latest News section. If there’s a package that requires manual intervention when updating, they’ll give you the instructions on how to deal with it. It happens rarely though, and even then, the instructions are usually just a couple of commands to paste on the terminal.

Install PostgreSQL

Speaking of packages that don’t play nice, PostgreSQL is particularly guilty. Every time a major upgrade is issued, for example, from version 11.0 to 12.0 , things change substantially and can break the PostgreSQL service, so they way to keep things from breaking is to install PostgreSQL, adding it to the list of ignored packages and then upgrading it manually in our own terms. Install PostgreSQL by entering

into the terminal. Then immediately enter

to get into Postgres console. Then enter

And let it do its thing. After it’s done, exit the Postgres terminal by entering exit . Finally, enable the PostgreSQL service by entering

Then immediately add PostgreSQL to the list of packages to exclude from upgrades by entering

Then find the line that says

and edit it so it looks like this:

From now on, every time you issue an update command, you’ll get a notice that Postgres is not being updated. You can still force a minor version update (for example, from 12.1 to 12.2 ) any time by issuing

and you’ll get the notice again. Accept and it will install with no problems. For major upgrades, though, you need to use something like pg_upgrade. Takes about one minute to do, but you still need to do it separate from other system updates.

Install Node.js

I like to be able to switch versions of node, so I use NVM, which stands for Node Version Manager. It’s super simple to install, you just need to open a terminal and do

And restart your terminal. If you don’t have curl, you can install it by entering

After you restart your terminal, you can install the latest version of node by entering

However, if you need a specific version, you can enter, for example

To see what versions of node you can use, enter

And then you can switch to whatever version you want

Install Ruby and gems

Ruby also has a version manager, aptly called RVM. Assuming you installed curl in the last step, get RVM by entering

and add the following at the end:

then log out and log back in. It uses the same list, install and use commands. Then install RubyGems by issuing

If you get an error, install the libyaml by entering

And then install you preferred Ruby version by issuing

Other cool software to install

In general, if you’re looking for a specific app, you should google appName Arch Linux and check the address of the result. If the domain is just archlinux.org , the you can assume you can install by issuing pacman -Syu packageName . If the address has the aur subdomain, that means it’s in the Arch User Repository and has to be installed with yay.

From the official Arch repos:

• Chromium
• LibreOffice
• Firefox
• VLC
• VSCode: If you prefer the standard version of VSCode.
• PowerLevel10k: an awesome Zsh theme.
• NeoFetch: View useful info about your computer.

From the AUR:

• VSCodium: “De-Microsofted” fork of VSCode.
• Spotify
• Slack
• Zoom
• Whatsapp
• KDocker: Minimize ANYTHING to the system tray! A must for Spotify.
• Oh My Zsh: an awesome zsh manager.

Cool websites for inspiration

By far, the best place to look at is the unix porn subreddit. It’s a place where users share their customizations with descriptions of what they did. You can filter by desktop environment and only see the posts for yours. Other places to look are xfce-look.org and the KDE store if you’re into KDE.

Closing thoughts

I hope you enjoyed this small series and stick with Arch Linux. Its wiki it’s an excellent source of information that is used even by users of other distros. Finally, please let me know if you think I missed a package that needs to be on either list. I know I did, so don’t be shy!