✓ Direct fit drop-in or better
⚠ Field mod works, but you rebuild the workflow
✗ No substitute part does not exist
Wayland ok native or portal-clean
Wayland ⚠ portal prompts, missing queries, per-desktop bridges
X11 only dies with the X session
Below the server evdev/uinput or pure console — immune
Not applicable nothing to display, or nothing to migrate
Every row is an application actually installed on the machine. Windows part on top, struck; substitute below; fitter's note underneath. Sorted the way the shelf is stocked, not by grade.
PowerToys 0.97.1 plus the three shell-extension packages covers 30 utilities in one box [1]. Linux has no box — you pick the sockets you actually turn. Window management (FancyZones, Workspaces, Grab And Move) is racked in a different aisle of this expedition. The rest, socket by socket: 9 direct fit · 7 field mod · 1 not stocked.
AHK is four products in one: a hotkey daemon, a key remapper, a text expander, and a scripting language with window, GUI and COM automation. Linux splits these across three layers — and the layer determines whether the part survives Wayland at all.
There is no equivalent of XGrabKey or XTestFakeInput. A client cannot read the keyboard while unfocused, cannot enumerate or move other clients' windows, and cannot inject synthetic input. Everything goes through a broker:
Accept that pixel-hunting and window-poking macros do not port. Rewrite them against CLIs and D-Bus instead.
These three all have Linux answers. None of them has the same answer — the shape of the workflow changes, and knowing that up front is the difference between a smooth week and a bad one.
Verdict: the single biggest workflow loss in the inventory.
Nothing on Linux bundles capture + annotate + OCR + custom uploader + history. You build it: Flameshot ★ 31k for the all-in-one, or grim+slurp feeding Satty ★ 2.3k if you want the Wayland-native pipeline; ksnip ★ 3.3k as the third option; Kooha ★ 3.5k or OBS ★ 74k for video; NormCap ★ 2.7k for the OCR slot.
Flameshot's own documentation enumerates the Wayland breakage — repeat portal prompts on GNOME, multi-monitor overlay bugs, shortcuts that do not fire — and states plainly: "We cannot do anything about it!" [14]. Custom uploaders become a shell script; that part is actually an upgrade.
Verdict: "run this throwaway and discard the changes" has no direct equivalent.
Sandboxie is Windows-only and kernel-driver based [32]. The mental model is what breaks: Sandboxie shadows the writes of an app you already installed and lets you throw them away afterwards. On Linux, Firejail ★ 7.6k applies a namespace and seccomp profile at launch time, bubblewrap ★ 8.2k is the low-level primitive and ships no ready-made profiles, and Flatpak ★ 5.0k only confines apps you installed through Flatpak [25].
Verdict: fine on Linux — and one packaging choice decides that.
The full desktop client is there, with system-authentication unlock via your Linux user password, fingerprint or other biometrics, or a security key [21]. Install the deb or rpm (or AUR, or the tar.gz). Do not install the Flatpak: it loses system authentication, loses the SSH agent, and loses unified app↔browser unlock [20] — three things you will notice on day one.
Still X11-only or degraded in 2026, among every tool named in this catalog. This matters because GNOME 50 [12] and Plasma 6.8 [13] no longer offer an X11 session to fall back to.
| Part | Stamp | Inspector's finding |
|---|---|---|
| AutoKey (upstream) ★ 3.9k | X11 only | Will not function in a Wayland session [7] |
| xdotool ★ 3.8k | X11 only | X11 protocol by definition; only reaches XWayland clients |
| sxhkd ★ 3.0k | X11 only | X11 key grabs |
| Flameshot ★ 31k | Wayland ⚠ | Portal-dependent; documented GNOME permission-prompt loops, multi-monitor overlay and hotkey failures [14] |
| Espanso ★ 14k | Wayland ⚠ | Separate experimental Wayland build; setcap, layout declaration, keyboard-hotplug restarts, app-specific config only via kdotool on KDE [6] |
| CopyQ ★ 12k | Wayland ⚠ | Needs the portal for shortcuts and a Shell extension on GNOME; modifier and mouse-position queries unavailable [15] |
| ydotool ★ 2.3k | Wayland ⚠ | Works, but root daemon and no window operations [9] |
| wtype ★ 549 | Wayland ⚠ | Requires virtual-keyboard-unstable-v1, absent on GNOME |
| keymapper ★ 1.1k | Wayland ⚠ | Context rules need a per-compositor bridge; process path may be unavailable [5] |
| keyd ★ 5.8k / kanata ★ 7.7k / Espanso's input layer | Passed | Below the display server entirely [3] |
Pick KDE Plasma or GNOME, not a wlroots compositor, if input automation matters at all — the portal implementations everything above depends on are simply missing on wlroots [11].
Operating-system features or one-line installs. No research required; nothing to decide.
Colophon. Replacement Parts Catalog No. 3, compiled from the survey The utility belt: per-tool Linux verdicts for a Windows power user (2026), one of seven angles in Throwing away Windows: a replacement plan for an actual installed-software inventory. Every part number corresponds to a program actually installed on the machine. Plate photographs from Wikimedia Commons. Filed in the Atlas.
