“Two or three months ago, I ran into an interesting problem. It was interesting for a couple of reasons, the first being that it has since recurred a number of times. The second is that it highlights a rapidly growing trend in the IT world.” Read the article at UnixReview.
Improving the Windows Experience with Cygwin, Version 1.3.20
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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It’s been a few months since I’ve installed cygwin anywhere, but from the looks of the first screenshot – it hasn’t changed.
The installer application is a non-resizeable window, which is a tremendous pain for selecting specific packages. It makes it difficult to actually see what you are installing as you not only need to do sideways scrolling, but you may need to resize column widths as well. Sitting with a 20″ monitor in front of me and having to do the install within about 1/4 of the screen is a pain.
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Funny how in the article, he talks about installing, then building wget and such. Unless he’s trying to prove it can be done, you can just select wget from the install process (as well as links and lynx)
I look forward to trying it out! It looks like a cool way to create a linux shop w/o alienating your windows users [autocad, office, etc..] You’ll never get rid of windows entirely, in business you can’t burn bridges. But how well does this work to integrate Windows desktops into a linux world?
Anyone have more info on what remote admin tasks you can perform? Can it let windows share NSF & printing resources with the network – on Linux terms rather than Windows terms?
Cool article!
thanks
I’ve been using Cygwin as my WinNT/2K shell for at least 3 years, and it’s the only thing that has saved my sanity.
I can not fathom not having this to do my day to day work.
I agree with the earlier poster about the installer. It’s fine for bulk updates, but when you simply want to update a single package, it’s a pain to open every node to find out what other surprises are in store for you.
For example, if you only want to install something simple, say bc, you don’t want to update Python and Postgres at the same time. It’s a pain to turn everything off but what you want.
I haven’t tried the X Windows though a co-worker has and had good results with it.
The interface to the C: D: E: world of the Windows file systems can have unexpected side effects.
For example, if you do something like mv dir1 dir2, cygwin may very well COPY the tree and delete the old one rather than simply rename the link.
Also, sometimes I’ll try launching windows program with cygwin pathnames (to bad results), but it’s rare, and the cygpath utility handles that most of the time.
I can not compare it to other UNIX-On-Windows systems, as I’ve never used those, but for day to day awk sed grep ls more stuff, it’s awesome.
Is the best thing to happen to computing since we broke the 640k barrier. 😉
Windows { 2000, XP } + cygwin = a usable “Linux” desktop with support for gaming. 😉
Seriously, I never install X with the other cygwin stuff, I don’t want it uglifying my system.
And I use the very nice Win32 port of EMACS, not the one from cygwin.
– chrish
I’m using Cygwin for over a year now on my development computer. While I am using Visual Studio and WinCVS for the most part, the usual command line development tools are very handy. I can’t imagine working without grep, diff etc.
IMO Cygwin on 2k/XP is a good combination. The people who whine about Windows not having a decent command line or X11 should give it a try!
its good for os development on windows boxes
much much better than djgpp
cywin and ncftp are the two tools I keep installed here on this `ole NT4 box at work.
chrish wrote:
> Seriously, I never install X with the other cygwin stuff,
> I don’t want it uglifying my system.
Well, you only see X when you actually fire it up.
I installed it so I could use nedit on NT. Mmmm… nedit.
> its good for os development on windows boxes
much much
> better than djgpp
then, when you grow tired of the bloat and slowness of Cygwin just to have a couple of useful commands, have a look at this: http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
I agree that cygwin is a very good thing, i have to have it installed whenever i have to work on a windows computer.
But yet it doesn’t work the same as it does in linux. I at least miss the “everything fits together” feeling of a full linux system, and can’t help but feel it is just kinda working as a “windows extender” in much the same way i used to use windows 3.1 extenders and dos extenders (and C64 extenders if you want to go even further back 🙂
Sure it is better than nothing, else i wouldn’t use it. But i hardly think it will convince any “real” unix/linux users to switch to windows. I see it much more as a band aid to unix users who have to use windows, or a really nice tool for people who prefer windows, but would like an improved command line environment, and of course anyone who needs an X server.
And yes, even with cygwin i will complain that windows lacks a good command line
Sure i got the tools that will allow me to get some work done, but i cant administrate the system from it, or control large parts of the GUI apps from it.
Who needs cygwin when you can get “native” ports of all the common *nix tools at: http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
Originally tried cygwin, and found it difficult (path naming problems esp), and stumbled on the above link… Got all the tools I need, and there are links to other gnu software ported to Win32…
chewy –> beat me to it heh
cygwin is way way to clumsy if all you want is command line utils
i use cat, grep, wget, and less all the time (well actually these are the only utils i tend to use)
i wouldnt touch cygwin unless there is something it has that you need/want which isnt in the unixutils for win32 pack.
Hasn’t Windows got a CLI of its own? I ran a “CMD” only a few minutes ago, IIRC.
What’s wrong with the Windows CLI (apart from being as unfriendly as UNIX)?
And have also been running it for quite some time.
Its handling of shared folders is a pain, but other than that it is a god send, and gets insto-browny-points when working with MSies who have never used anything else
>Hasn’t Windows got a CLI of its own?
Yes, but it is all down to what you are use to, I stuggle (really really stuggle) to use “the dos prompt”, it is increadable clunky compared to say bash, but then thats me.
> X
X for Windows is very usefull, and having KDE is also very funky, but its slow and its rootless mode sucks.
But yeah the install sucks, and has just foo’ed my Cygwin install, Grrr!
I like Windows Services for UNIX, it might cost 99 dollars but its of great quality, There arent many programs I havent gotten to work for it, in fact I have updated the GNU tools gcc, make etc But I also got KDE 3.1 compiled on it with XFree86 4.3, but of course Im more technically inclined than the average person.
What’s wrong with the Windows CLI (apart from being as unfriendly as UNIX)?
type echo “hello” . You are talking about a CLI that managed to screw up echo!
unxutils doesn’t seem to include bash, which is in my opinion a major disadvantage over cygwin. That’s enough for me to prefer cygwin over unxutils.
Also cygwin includes an X server; I don’t use it very often, but it’s availability can come in handy sometimes.
Pipes. Are there any shells on the unxutils that do that? otherwise it’s worthless to me really.
unxutils doesn’t have any shells past the sh/zsh it uses to smooth script running. i don’t think it’s particularly full-featured in terms of continual use though.
it has some Win32 ports of programs providing unix-y command functionality.
if you need more than just the convenience of unix-style commands (i.e., a more complete and robust unix environment under Windows), install Cygwin.
if you want Cygwin but don’t like bash, use another shell or even use the cygwin tools from you Windows shell command line by adding the cygwin bin directory to your Windows path. if you want, that is.
I really love to read his articles – even when the subject itself is only of nominal interest to me (which is not the case here).
type echo “hello” . You are talking about a CLI that managed to screw up echo!
How is echo supposed to work? echo “hello” writes “hello” onto the screen. If you want the Posix behaviour, use a Posix echo. CMD’s echo works as advertised.