Gentoo Archives: gentoo-cygwin

From: roger <roger@××××××.com>
To: gentoo-cygwin@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-cygwin] Hello!
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:03:12
Message-Id: 1198191732.15460.32.camel@localhost3.localdomain
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-cygwin] Hello! by "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky"
1 On Thu, 2007-12-20 at 05:58 -0800, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
2
3 >
4 > I don't run Cygwin at home, but I do run it at work. I have never even
5 > attempted to use Gentoo Cygwin. Quite frankly, Cygwin is a crutch. It
6 > has no practical business use cases on a Windows server (not that there
7 > are many practical business use cases for Windows servers in general,
8 > given the license costs.) :)
9
10 Basically see Cygwin as a crutch too for getting Linux or Open Source
11 apps compiling within the Win32 platform. From my experience, doesn't
12 take much except fixing linking libraries, etc. Nowadays, it's probably
13 even easier as most of the fixes are already done, or there's a work
14 around for a missing lib.
15
16 >
17 > On a desktop, nearly all of the open source applications that I use have
18 > native Windows ports now, and some of them, for example R, actually have
19 > a *better* user interface than the original Linux version.
20
21 Think they just link the user interface libraries in from windows, but
22 thought they used cygwin/ming to compile the open source apps (aka for
23 porting apps).
24
25 > Basically, if
26 > you want a Linux desktop, you're better off installing Linux, and if you
27 > need a mixed Windows/Linux desktop, you're better off with VMware
28 > Workstation.
29
30 I'm mixed on this one. If you need a Windows application while running
31 Linux utilizing USB or some other peripheral, Vmware (costs $) or
32 VirtualBox (free/open source) are good choices. Otherwise, some
33 variation of Wine will probably do the trick. But basically, he's
34 correct.
35
36 If I'm using *any* Windows boxes, I still want all the luxuries of the
37 command line console (rxvt) with tools such as bash, wget, ping, etc.
38
39 Window's ping tool just plainly sucks ;-)
40
41 > Finally, if you are a die-hard Cygwin fan, there is Cygwin-Ports, a
42 > community that is far more active than Gentoo Cygwin. And Cygwin's
43 > package management system isn't all that bad on its own. But it ain't Linux.
44
45 However, i386 compiled Bash is agonizingly slow. If I plan on using
46 cygwin any length of extended time, I *will* recompile & install bash
47 utilizing "-O3 -march=pentium3".
48
49 Who knows, maybe I'll pickup this project this Winter if I have time for
50 a day or two. Usually I tend to spend time programming C though.
51
52 Looking at the Gentoo Cygwin wiki, does look like the majority of the
53 work is completed. :-)
54
55 --
56 Roger
57 http://www.eskimo.com/~roger/index.html
58 Key fingerprint = 8977 A252 2623 F567 70CD 1261 640F C963 1005 1D61
59
60 Thu Dec 20 14:01:09 AKST 2007
61
62 --
63 gentoo-cygwin@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-cygwin] Hello! Jason Alonso <jbalonso@×××××.com>