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Why not just install the Cygwin tools and find out?

It's not clear what kinds of areas you are working on, so its not easy to recommend a tool.

Personally, I use C/C++ for general purpose apps. Nevertheless, for text/scripts Perl is hard to beat, for objects/GUIs Python is amazing, and Haskell wipes the floor with all the other languages on numerical/functional work. (OK, I admit, I have no life).

In terms of tools,

DevC++and Cygwin, work well for C/C++ development, and together form a nice little set of tools.

Perl can be found at CPANwhich has links to various interpreters and IDEs. It is a language of crazed brilliance, and is wonderfully cross-platform.

Python is really great, comes with a very well-thought-out IDE (IDLE) and a very familiar syntax. It has standard modules which will link it to C++ and Windows.

And finally, Haskell is at Haskell.org, and offers Hugs, which is probably the most advanced open-source IDE available for any language.

With so many wondrous open source tools available, I feel pretty bad about saying this, but your best bet in a corporate environment might actually be Java. It's boring, it's a little slow, its overhyped. In short, it is the Devil and whenever I have used it, I have wanted to kill myself and my neighbours. Still, its free, popular and backed by a big old corporation, its very similar to C++ and you won't get fired for choosing it. Best go with Java.

www.cygwin.com! free GCC compiler!

click me! also, perl!

python even has gui bindings for windows.. hell, so does java.

I've been using win98 and cygwin for a while now. I get to use my favorite CLI tools and dozens of windows software.

-AC-

a well written C program can be as portible as Java.

Not if you want to use advanced OS features such as sockets or a GUI and the most common workstation operating system on the most common consumer workstation doesn't support POSIX well, let alone X11. Or are you talking about emulating POSIX on a winbox (that is, the opposite of WINE)?

Java code is not native

Bull. GCJ can compile Java language source code to a native binary using the same code generator G++ uses. Granted, you do lose a bit of performance to the GC thread.

Well, I can't get to the site right now, But I'd be fairly sure that you can compile it under cygwin and XFree.

For those who don't know, cygwin is an adaptation layer for POSIX programs to run under windows. And XFree has already been ported.

Most apps compile reasonably easily. I use window maker as my wm for example.

Well, I can't get to the site right now, But I'd be fairly sure that you can compile it under cygwin and XFree.

For those who don't know, cygwin is an adaptation layer for POSIX programs to run under windows. And XFree has already been ported.

Most apps compile reasonably easily. I use window maker as my wm for example.

Anyone else notice that he's dropped GNU/Linux altogether? Now it's just GNU. No credit given at all to the kernel. I guess it's just not important.

That's because the issues are the same, whether you run GNU/Linux, GNU/Solaris, GNU/Win32, GNU/DOS, or any other port of the GNU userland.

He isn't pro-Free software in the least. He is simply pro-GPL and anti-everything else.

He's pro-free software. He understands that BSD-class licenses (especially for noddy programs under 2 KLOC or for software used in embedded systems), weak copyleft licenses (especially for free clones of common libraries), and GPL-class strong copyleft licenses all have their place.

Want to -really- know the Windows API, the best challenge would be to write Assembler code, start with: Iczelion's Win32 Assembly Homepage

If you're familiar with C, check out the generic Win32 sample at MSDN to get you started with the basic framework: Generic Win32 Ap

Windows C++ Programmers prefer ATL/WTL nowadays to the bloat of MFC. ATL (Active Template Library) makes it easy to write COM components and WTL (Windows Template Library) is a lightweight C++ wrapper for Win32 functions that MS uses internally. They released WTL unsupported with the last few Platform SDK CDs. Some tutorials and articles on ATL/WTL.

Now you can also go the maverick route and install Cygwin and XFree86 on Windows (next best thing to being able to code on *nix.)
Cygwin GNU Tools for Windows
XFree 86 For Windows

Enjoy
Chris

Want to -really- know the Windows API, the best challenge would be to write Assembler code, start with: Iczelion's Win32 Assembly Homepage

If you're familiar with C, check out the generic Win32 sample at MSDN to get you started with the basic framework: Generic Win32 Ap

Windows C++ Programmers prefer ATL/WTL nowadays to the bloat of MFC. ATL (Active Template Library) makes it easy to write COM components and WTL (Windows Template Library) is a lightweight C++ wrapper for Win32 functions that MS uses internally. They released WTL unsupported with the last few Platform SDK CDs. Some tutorials and articles on ATL/WTL.

Now you can also go the maverick route and install Cygwin and XFree86 on Windows (next best thing to being able to code on *nix.)
Cygwin GNU Tools for Windows
XFree 86 For Windows

Enjoy
Chris

I'd use X a lot more if I could get an X server on windows (anyone got XFree to work?) but in a UNIX environment this feature really rocks.

Gotta love Cygwin. Some other freaks have even started porting KDE to Windows...

In my experience, X-Win32 from Starnet also works very well. And don't forget Cygwin/XFree86, a Windows port of XFree86.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned that it is already possible (and on top of that, for free) to run Linux on top of an installed Windows OS.

Check out Cygwin, which started as a Bash shell for windows, and now has advanced API's, etc. It even comes with X11, GCC, SSH, SSHD, Perl, etc. Now I have Win2k on my desktop, running SSHD so that I can login remotely and run scientific simulation jobs, access my files, etc. From here you can even run a CVS server.

In my opinion this is the way to go: have Windows and MS take care of hardware compatibility, and have Linux focus on software and usability issues. No matter how much I hate to admit it, having an underlying OS with good hardware support is bliss. Most OEMs ship their PCs with Windows installed anyway. With Cygwin, all you need to do is install Cygwin.

Sure, you can argue that it's not really Linux since it depends on Cygwin's API and everything, but with more support from the free software community this can make a very nice system that is very easy to install (since you don't have to fight to get your kernel to support your brand new graphics card), and has good UNIX-like features.

Oh, and they're available for free, with GPL and everything.

I know I'm going to get flamed for saying this, but there really is no economic reason for the success of any Open Source venture. There is no business model that will derive financial income from a product that cannot be sold. The true "success" comes from all people benefiting from the efforts of the few authors. Those authors benefit, too, of course, but only in the same "free (beer)" sense. Why should any give-away scheme (especially one as strongly held as the GPL) be able to make money?

Sure, Cygwin, RedHat, et al, have been making a go of it selling the side-stuff (support, servers, etc.) that some people want. And the GPL very explicitly permits charging for the physical distribution of the code. I think we may see companies such as these moving into the "selling distribution" model. And that's not evil, it's just the reality that this article mentions.

But then what are people willing to pay for a distro server? I just freshened some Cygwin stuff on my box here, and they gave me a list of servers to try. It did take a couple of tries to find a site willing to serve this stuff up. I can't say as I'd want the entire customer base of Cygwin knocking at my ports looking for 20MB each, either.

So, donations seem to be about the only way to make things run until someone sets up a paid-for-distro company. And even a distro company will have to "compete" with anyone offering to serve it up for free!

John

Just install Cygwin and compile it for your Windows NT/2000/XP.

Trouble is that as the Cygwin FAQ points out, Cygwin is not secure in a multi-user environment. So if someone is sitting at the machine locally they could exploit the Cygwin DLL to take over your ssh session.

The insecurity of Cygwin doesn't stop it being a very useful tool for single user Windows boxes, but it is kinda silly to use it to compile what's meant to be a security-enhancing program like ssh.

I've put a lot of work into porting XFree86 to Cygwin:
Cygwin/XFree86

I personally have three motivations for porting XFree86 to Cygwin. My first reason is that I wanted to go to MIT (short story: didn't get in :). When I visited there, back in 1996, I went to the library and found out what I could about the Athena system. I found out that it used the X Window System, so I pulled a book off the shelf about UNIX and the X Window System and started reading. I was determined to learn everything that I could about UNIX and X so that I would be ready when I got to MIT. Well, since I didn't get in, I started working with the X Window System just to show them that I could handle anything they created :) So, my first reason was to spite MIT :)

My second motivation was my intro CS course at Carnegie Mellon in 1997. We were using Emacs under X and I wanted a way for people with only Windows machines in their dorm rooms to be able to get an X session on the lab computers without having to shell out big bucks for a commercial X Server. It wasn't until 3 years later that I found the Cygwin/XFree86 project and finished it up by making it work on Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000, as opposed to just on Windows NT/2000. My second reason was derived from my shock at the rip-off prices being charged for X Servers on Windows.

My final motivation for porting XFree86 to Windows was that I wanted IS guys to be able to simply install Cygwin/XFree86 to allow Windows desktops to access new *free* applications running on remote Linux boxes (like GNUe, KOffice, etc.). I figured it was critical to the success of Linux in business to ease the transitionary path from Windows to Linux (by allowing coexistance). My third reason is thus a contribution to the free software movement that I had previously only benefitted from.

There you have it. Did I waste my time? Nope.

Now work is progessing on porting KDE, Gnome, and now Debian to Cygwin/XFree86. I couldn't be happier!

Harold

According to the Cygwin web site, Cygwin is "a UNIX environment for Windows...a UNIX emulation layer".

So I must raise a question of symantics: Is this technically "porting" or mearly something akin to "cross-compiling"? After all, it's not compiling under Windows but a Unix facade over top of Windows?

As a co-author of a book about Autoconf and friends, I obviously disagree. I don't know why you have trouble using autoconf on Plan 9. I'll just note that I've used autoconf on Windows with the Microsoft C compiler, and it works fine (autoconf does require cygwin to run on Windows, but the programs I built with autoconf did not).

You are certainly correct that autoconf is not going to prevent anybody from writing bad code, such as code littered with #ifdef statements. autoconf is a tool, and it's quite possible to use it poorly.

To me, makes sense to write it as Unix-like and ignore NT as much as possible. I would suggest using Cygwin on top of NT/2000 (a unix compatibility layer, more or less), which includes standard GNU tools. There are some licensing issues with proprietary apps and linking against libcygwin.a (ie, you have to buy a licence), but it may be worth your while to pursue it. Or, try convincing the company to install Interix on their NT/2000 machines - it's basically Microsoft's own version of a Unix subsystem, and it's not horribly expensive (MSRP is US$100).

Compiler? Library? Duh!

Actually GCC does now have a threading abstraction. But you didn't use capital GCC for 'Collection', "mandria", so you are stupid after all.

You'd want mingw or cygwin instead of djgpp anyway.

And g++ (or any of these ports) cannot develop against native Windows QT. Different C++ ABIs, you see.

Yes, you could build and run Evolution under Windows, but currently ONLY under Cygwin + an X11 server (this is still local on the Windows box). A Cygwin setup can be accomplished by a newbie. See links below for running GNOME under Cygwin on a Windows box.

Much of GNOME will not build natively, although the libraries themselves are designed to be portable, and GTK is working just fine as Win32 (see GIMP).

There are two kinds of Windows ports... X11 display based, and true "native" Win32. The former is easy to do; the latter is not yet possible (tho you can help!). It's likely that a "native GNOME for Windows" will be much easier, once GTK 2.0 is released.

Links regarding running GNOME or compiling under a local X11 display:
http://news.gnome.org/976323862/index_html
http://xfree86.cygwin.com/screenshots/
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley/1596/en/c ygwin.html

From the GNOME FAQ, regarding native GNOME for M$ Windows:
http://canvas.gnome.org:65348/gnomefaq/html/x359.h tml

A lot of people want to port GNOME and GTK apps over to Windows. To conquer the enemy they say, you have to enter their territory, then sway them to your culture (OS). ;-)

You can install bash on Windows.

http://cygwin.com[goatse.cx]

Or just download one of the precompiled binaries from nethack.org, and play that.

I use Cygwin on Windows XP. I just love how it shuts up the anti-Microsoft zealots as I compile and run such useful programs as lynx and moon-buggy.

I personally think that cross platform capabilities are truly one of the cornerstone capabilities of OSS. To me, the developments in WINE and Cygwin are some of the most important in the entire community these days. I know that's a pretty bold statement, but I say that because both of them are major enabler technologies, both making OSS viable to a whole new crop of users. I know that there are a lot of people that have the "Screw Windoze!" mentality, but users and community are the lifeblood of OSS, which is why I feel that these projects are so important. And they've made a lot of progress lately; I don't follow WINE really closely, but did you know that Cygwin can run XFree86, and that a port of KDE 2 is underway? I'm just waiting for the day when WINE and Cygwin can run each other... :) I must admit that I am really keen on Cygwin because it has such a low barrier for entry; it makes it so much easier to introduce my friends to open source and the *nix way. As WINE matures, getting them to upgrade to Linux will be cake: "Run the programs you're used to on a stable OS without M$ license restrictions!"

And there is no need to run it - Cygwin comes with an ssh daemon. It's fairly easy to set up, just run ssh-host-config. You can run it as a Win2K service if you want. Also, as I'm sure many others will mention, Cygwin includes the coolest text-mode email client, mutt. It's hightly configurable, with colors and split panes and whatnot.

If Cygwin doesn't run under telnet, you might be able to run a telnet server under Cygwin. Same result.

Here's a useful page that covers Pine, Cygwin, and other related topics.

Cygwin. Great stuff. allows you to run a great deal of GNU and other software on win32. :-)

Cygwin installs perfectly even if you don't have admin rights. You can even
run secure shell under it!

Y'know, when I installed W2K I thought Microsoft finally made an operating system that was "Good Enough". It was reasonably stable, and it did what I needed. Video games, development, office apps. It was as easy to use as Win95 (What the hell do you mean, "Robin Drive failed?") and as stable as NT4.

And I could make it as pretty as I wanted, with Windowblinds without giving up a nice bash prompt and emacs.

I swore I'd never upgrade Windows again. Now they have Windows XP. New technology, multi-user, blablabla. I thought nothing short of support for ext2fs would make me upgrade. I was wrong.

ONE new feature that is absolutely essential if you have an LCD screen. (ie. a laptop) Cleartype filtering. So much nicer on the eyes. Text has never looked so good.

Overview of Cleartype & Links
Some samples

Cygwin

not truly a port, but pretty cool nonetheless.

I was suprised to see it wasn't available with Cygwin yet, but it is available separately (Cygwin.dll is a POSIX api that runs under Windows, and the whole Cygwin system is a shell environment consisting of lots of programs that have been compiled to use Cygwin.dll - check it out if you use Windows at all; it's very easy to install).

Anyway, you can get what is called "NT Emacs" from one of these mirrors. Note you will need a Microsoft compiler to build it; it has not yet been configured to build under gcc for Windows - if you don't have MSVC, then get one of the binary packages.

This is the NT Emacs FAQ.

Despite that it is called "NT Emacs" it is reported to work on non-NT versions of Windows.

Here is a helpful installation guide.

Here is a Google search for "NT Emacs" that turns up a lot of helpful pages.

NT Emacs by default runs the Windows command interpreter when you run shells within it. If you use Cygwin, here is how you run bash as a shell under NT Emacs.

After getting all nostalgic about emacs in my post below, I thought I'd give my old friend another try. But right now I'm doing Windows work, and I was suprised to find Cygwin doesn't provide emacs; a little search turned up the above. I haven't actually even downloaded it yet, but I'm about to. I run Linux too (Debian PPC & Slackware) but this way I can use it for my current work.

I was suprised to see it wasn't available with Cygwin yet, but it is available separately (Cygwin.dll is a POSIX api that runs under Windows, and the whole Cygwin system is a shell environment consisting of lots of programs that have been compiled to use Cygwin.dll - check it out if you use Windows at all; it's very easy to install).

Anyway, you can get what is called "NT Emacs" from one of these mirrors. Note you will need a Microsoft compiler to build it; it has not yet been configured to build under gcc for Windows - if you don't have MSVC, then get one of the binary packages.

This is the NT Emacs FAQ.

Despite that it is called "NT Emacs" it is reported to work on non-NT versions of Windows.

Here is a helpful installation guide.

Here is a Google search for "NT Emacs" that turns up a lot of helpful pages.

NT Emacs by default runs the Windows command interpreter when you run shells within it. If you use Cygwin, here is how you run bash as a shell under NT Emacs.

After getting all nostalgic about emacs in my post below, I thought I'd give my old friend another try. But right now I'm doing Windows work, and I was suprised to find Cygwin doesn't provide emacs; a little search turned up the above. I haven't actually even downloaded it yet, but I'm about to. I run Linux too (Debian PPC & Slackware) but this way I can use it for my current work.

[1] I'm working on travtrack and travlib. Travtrack is a programme to manipulate a Traveller universe. Travlib is a library of functions and classes (using C/gtk+) which represent a Traveller universe. Traveller was a great old science-fiction game from the 70s which has been given a new lease on life with GURPS Traveller from Steve Jackson Games.

• A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a UNIX emulation layer providing substantial UNIX API functionality.
  
• A collection of tools, ported from UNIX, which provide UNIX/Linux look and feel.
  

I've heard about Interix before, and I've even visited its website. But what the website doesn't say and what I want to know is: how does it compare to Cygwin?

But won't that make the problem even worse? Unless you have a veeery slow Linux box (486, 16MB RAM) you can probably do a dozen compiles or more in one week :) And I can pretty much say for 100% that the kernel will not compile with LCC. Plus you must have an as86 compatible assembler to build the more interesting parts. Nevertheless, good luck, and if you do succeed, let us know! :-)

Also, check out CygWin

-adnans

I read the first article in this series, and since then I've learned all sorts of things about secure shell. Here's my recommendations (similar to the above) for making your life easy and secure:

Create a DSA public key/private key pair:

$ ssh-keygen -t dsa

You'll be prompted to enter an encryption passphrase to protect your private key in the event that your account is compromised.

Copy (scp) the public key to other hosts you want to be able to get to easily and securely:

$ scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub remotehost:

Connect to the other hosts and add this public key to your list of authorized keys:

$ ssh remotehost
$ cat id_dsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2
$ exit

Presuming you are running X (specifically this worked for me with Gnome under RedHat 7.1; probably very applicable everywhere else), setup a .xsession file with these contents:

cat > .xsession
#!/bin/sh

exec /usr/bin/ssh-agent sh -c '/usr/bin/ssh-add & sleep 5; exec /usr/bin/gnome-session'

Now logout and log back in. You'll be prompted for the encryption phrase you entered for your DSA private key. Now you'll be able to ssh to the remote hosts you setup the authorized_keys2 file for without typing a password or an encryption passphrase!

I was able to ssh into my Windows NT machine at work from my Linux machine at work using this technique. I had ssh installed with cygwin. You have to setup a host key for the Windows machine with this command:

$ ssh-keygen -t dsa -f /etc/ssh_host_dsa_key -N ''

And then you have to start the server:

$ /usr/sbin/sshd

Then put your public key into the authorized_keys2 file on the Windows machine. You may need to connect as "Administrator":

linux$ ssh Administrator@winnt

You really need to try to understand how all this works to be able to make good informed decisions about security. Read some good accounts of basic public key/private key encryption (RSA/PGP) to start. If you already know how PGP works, the public key authentication of ssh (which keeps you from having to type a password) works very similarly: the ssh client basically provides a signature using the private key which the server on the remote host checks against the public key to validate your identity. Plus, this protects against the password keypress timing "attack" mentioned a week or two ago.

Be sure to always verify the host key signature of a machine you ssh to for the first time. This protects you against the man-in-the-middle attack, the only real vulnerability ssh has. (If you always verify that long hex string with the real value, you'll never be compromised.) If you need the hex host key signature for a machine, you can get it by typing:

$ ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub

But only do this in a verified connection, such as on the console.

BTW, many exact paths may vary. You may find things in /usr/local instead of /usr. You may find ssh config files in /etc/ssh instead of /etc. You also probably want to review manpages, look up the command-line options I used, decide between DSA and RSA, etc. Have fun!

That about sums up four weeks of learning or so for you. I hope others can benefit from what I've learned. Now I plan to go read that second article and see what else I can learn!

Have you ever tried the XFree86 Windows port from Cygwin? I've used it in the past to get a remote X login on windows 9x and 2000 machines I had to use at the time. And, yes, it's free.

Have you ever tried the XFree86 Windows port from Cygwin? I've used it in the past to get a remote X login on windows 9x and 2000 machines I had to use at the time. And, yes, it's free.

-earl

I prefer a decent command-line interface within an ergonomic GUI, i.e. best of both worlds. Windows definitely benefits from the addition of this . The shortcomings of the Windows CLI never cease to astound me. For instance, a command-line is not very functional without a decent egrep-like tool, IMHO.

[begin irrelevant]

Have you noticed that most of the OS vendors are trying to be UNIX like.

Take NT for example. With 2K it introduced many "new" concepts like "mounting", "symbolic links", and "telnet daemon". With Cygwin, it becomes a very good "development" environment.

BeOS, QNX and alike are trying to be (semi) POSIX compliant from the beginning.

[end irrelevant]

But BeOS surely failed in driver support. Mine and my friends' Be adventure was short because of driver issues.

The conclusion is: Since there is (almost) no driver issue on PDAs, BeOS may suit very well on them. I do not know how much Palm integrate from Be kernel, but they will surely use Be applications and development environment. With the addition of the PalmOS emulator (currently downloadable from their site) we may see many free software development on *nix for Palm.

According to http://www.cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/overview.html , ``The Cygwin tools are ports of the popular GNU development tools and utilities for Windows NT and 9x. They function through the use of the Cygwin library which provides the UNIX system calls and environment that these programs require.'' (They've also added a number of other useful Unix utilities).

So, it depends on whether he uses the GNU tools, (like Bash, less, etc.) and whether he thinks they're worth supporting, or just flaming /.-style.

For a straight A: fix the problem forever by replacing NT with Linux...

Shouldn't be too hard to alter one of the standard installers to:

• Download a minimalist CygWin kit
• Pull down a second-stage installer
• Shrink a partition, live (might have to defrag first)
• Add three new partitions in the shrinkage (swap, image, /var) using ReiserFS for the data partitions
• Download and write a base Linux installation image into the image partition
• Download and install suitable drivers for (e.g.) video card
• Set up Linux config of network interfaces, DNS, webserver, video, etc from Windows config
• Copy all active websites into /var/www
• If any actually use ASP, download, install and use ASP2PHP on them
• Make the service pack ingredients available via HTTP so that daughter sites can fetch from here istead of home base
• Break all passwords and copy them across to PAM (invent a new root password)
• Put the new root password on the default background wallpaper
• Reboot into Linux, auto-login as root, and restore DNS/web service
• Migrate all (in case something didn't translate) Windows data into /var/WASWINDOWS
• Set up a listener at default.ida to react to future CodeRed probes
• Go through the logs and process all attacking sites

HTH...
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

Cygwin has a port of xfree86 (along with many other handy unix apps) for windows at http://xfree86.cygwin.com/.

Now if only I could compile Qt on my XFree/Cygwin setup I could get these working with KDE on my Windows box.

GNOME has been ported to windows, along with XF86, using Cygwin - there was an article about it here a few months back...