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top - pslist
ptree - pslist
w - psloggedon
ls -al - dir /adhs, fsutil (both standard)
finger - finger (standard)
unzip - expand (standard, for CABs), cygwin unzip, rar
mount - (automatic), fsutil, linkd (from resource kit)
make - make (comes with SDK)
grep - find (standard)
piping with | > < are the same
perl
cygwin for other UNIX processing utils.

Well, I have to admit that after using Linux as my desktop for three years (and using Win4Lin), I had to switch back to Windows so that I could use Quicken, Palm Desktop, see all the multimedia that's out there on the web, and, yes, play games. But I use Linux on my home servers, and I'll bring up Linux apps using Cygwin's X server.

So I feel a little bit dirty, but not horribly dirty.

DT

• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• Outpost Firewall
• Cygwin
• The GIMP
• Spybot
• adAware
• Trillian
• Google Desktop Search
• SETI@home
• iTunes

You can get most the basic Linux stuff you need for windows, as part of the Cygwin package. Has everything I've needed, including an X server.

However, for your first time with Linux, I'd go with Mandrake or a similar distro (Xandros, etc.). At the moment I'm working on a Mandrake box, and it is very easy to configure, although I usually use Gentoo. Gentoo is more advanced, and there aren't any graphical configuration tools, which you probably want to have if you've never used Linux before.

I have also heard good things about Ubuntu, but haven't tried it myself.

But for your first time, go with Mandrake. And if you can, try to get a book on configuring everything, it can be easier sometimes than reading manual pages.

If you wanted I could probably compile you a Windows version of md5sum (I have a cross compiler setup). If you're interested, send me an email.

ActiveState Python is what you need on server boxes for quick jobs like that, never failed me yet on the 8 Server 2003 systems at work. (Soon to be looking at migrating to Linux/Samba, however.)

Don't forget Cygwin either. Very useful piece of kit, especially considering the state of the command prompt...

Because as we all know, it's virtually impossible to run Linux software on any other systems.

Exactly.

I 'discovered" open source apps for Windows just this past year. I "found" hundreds of them. Most of them were ports of GNU/BSD apps. Some were pure Windows from the beginning.

Then I found Cygwin. After playing with it for a bit I realized that it would be much simpler just to switch to Linux.....

So, I came back to Linux after 4 years "away".

So in my case open source on Windows brought the advantage of an open source platform to my attention - front and center.

I think there's room for everyone...

Find a way to port it to Flash drives and such

I already run Cygwin on a flash drive. Granted, I only run some BASH, CVS, Lynx, clisp, and some other text utilities. But it only takes up 69,884,685 bytes plus slack. Here's what I did:

1. I'm installing on a computer with limited permissions (no install allowed). So I downloaded setup.exe from Cygwin.com.
2. Ran setup.exe. I told it to:
   • Install only for me (although I didn't install untill later).
   • Download only from the Internet to c:\temp\cygwin-setup\.
   • Use a local mirror. Don't bother with any of the suggested default ones - they are slow. I used a little-known mirror from a local university.
3. I selected the minimum install and a few extra packages. Don't go overboard. If you want more, you can install them later. Note that I selected Nano instead of Emacs. I'm just weird, OK!
4. Took a break while setup.exe worked hard downloading. I think Cygwin still has a grudge against me for that! :-p
5. After downloading was completed, I finished the process to close setup.exe.
6. I made a zip copy of c:\temp\cygwin-setup\ in case I fubar my installation. That way I can go back to a minimum build. You didn't go overboard a few steps ago, right?
7. Now I reran setup.exe to download any other crap like clisp (I kid, I kid!) that I wanted. Use the same settings as above except for the package selections. Use common sense.
8. I ran setup.exe a third time. I told it to use the files downloaded and install them to c:\temp\cygwin\. I opted NOT to add all the shortcuts that Realplayer likes to force on me. Now I checked to make sure it worked by running the batch file in the directory.
9. After verifying that it works, copy the entire cygwin directory to your flash drive. I put mine under \programs\windows\.
10. That batch file won't work with other computers because it fubars the mount points. After a little bit of experimenting, I figured out a better batch file for portable drives. I use:

    @echo off
    
    rem - required for `man` to work
    set TERM=cygwin
    
    rem - sets home path
    rem - replace LOGONNAME with your log-on name (you can choose anything)
    rem - create this folder by hand
    set HOME=%cd%\home\LOGONNAME
    
    rem - set mount points
    rem - these make the directories and drives, which
    rem - are required to start cygwin, readable
    bin\mount -f -u -b "%cd%\\bin" "/usr/bin"
    bin\mount -f -u -b "%cd%\\lib" "/usr/lib"
    bin\mount -f -u -b "%cd%" "/"
    bin\mount -u -b --change-cygdrive-prefix "/cygdrive"
    
    rem - start shell
    bin\bash --login -i

11. I run this batch file from a simple wsh vbscript (the horror):

    set shellProxy = WScript.createObject("WScript.Shell")
    
    cygwinDir = shellProxy.currentDirectory + "\programs\windows\cygwin"
    
    shellProxy.currentDi rectory = cygwinDir
    
    shellProxy.Run "cygwin.bat"

12. Now run that. Does it work? If so, close everything, unmount the USB drive in Windows, and put try it with a clean computer. It should work in that one two. Now you have a portable Cygwin-based BASH shell on a Flash Drive.

Hope someone finds that useful! Some resources that really helped me out include:

1. Portable Cygwin on a CD discussion.
2. Portable Install on USB Flash Drive discussion.

Find a way to port it to Flash drives and such

I already run Cygwin on a flash drive. Granted, I only run some BASH, CVS, Lynx, clisp, and some other text utilities. But it only takes up 69,884,685 bytes plus slack. Here's what I did:

1. I'm installing on a computer with limited permissions (no install allowed). So I downloaded setup.exe from Cygwin.com.
2. Ran setup.exe. I told it to:
   • Install only for me (although I didn't install untill later).
   • Download only from the Internet to c:\temp\cygwin-setup\.
   • Use a local mirror. Don't bother with any of the suggested default ones - they are slow. I used a little-known mirror from a local university.
3. I selected the minimum install and a few extra packages. Don't go overboard. If you want more, you can install them later. Note that I selected Nano instead of Emacs. I'm just weird, OK!
4. Took a break while setup.exe worked hard downloading. I think Cygwin still has a grudge against me for that! :-p
5. After downloading was completed, I finished the process to close setup.exe.
6. I made a zip copy of c:\temp\cygwin-setup\ in case I fubar my installation. That way I can go back to a minimum build. You didn't go overboard a few steps ago, right?
7. Now I reran setup.exe to download any other crap like clisp (I kid, I kid!) that I wanted. Use the same settings as above except for the package selections. Use common sense.
8. I ran setup.exe a third time. I told it to use the files downloaded and install them to c:\temp\cygwin\. I opted NOT to add all the shortcuts that Realplayer likes to force on me. Now I checked to make sure it worked by running the batch file in the directory.
9. After verifying that it works, copy the entire cygwin directory to your flash drive. I put mine under \programs\windows\.
10. That batch file won't work with other computers because it fubars the mount points. After a little bit of experimenting, I figured out a better batch file for portable drives. I use:

    @echo off
    
    rem - required for `man` to work
    set TERM=cygwin
    
    rem - sets home path
    rem - replace LOGONNAME with your log-on name (you can choose anything)
    rem - create this folder by hand
    set HOME=%cd%\home\LOGONNAME
    
    rem - set mount points
    rem - these make the directories and drives, which
    rem - are required to start cygwin, readable
    bin\mount -f -u -b "%cd%\\bin" "/usr/bin"
    bin\mount -f -u -b "%cd%\\lib" "/usr/lib"
    bin\mount -f -u -b "%cd%" "/"
    bin\mount -u -b --change-cygdrive-prefix "/cygdrive"
    
    rem - start shell
    bin\bash --login -i

11. I run this batch file from a simple wsh vbscript (the horror):

    set shellProxy = WScript.createObject("WScript.Shell")
    
    cygwinDir = shellProxy.currentDirectory + "\programs\windows\cygwin"
    
    shellProxy.currentDi rectory = cygwinDir
    
    shellProxy.Run "cygwin.bat"

12. Now run that. Does it work? If so, close everything, unmount the USB drive in Windows, and put try it with a clean computer. It should work in that one two. Now you have a portable Cygwin-based BASH shell on a Flash Drive.

Hope someone finds that useful! Some resources that really helped me out include:

1. Portable Cygwin on a CD discussion.
2. Portable Install on USB Flash Drive discussion.

Find a way to port it to Flash drives and such

I already run Cygwin on a flash drive. Granted, I only run some BASH, CVS, Lynx, clisp, and some other text utilities. But it only takes up 69,884,685 bytes plus slack. Here's what I did:

1. I'm installing on a computer with limited permissions (no install allowed). So I downloaded setup.exe from Cygwin.com.
2. Ran setup.exe. I told it to:
   • Install only for me (although I didn't install untill later).
   • Download only from the Internet to c:\temp\cygwin-setup\.
   • Use a local mirror. Don't bother with any of the suggested default ones - they are slow. I used a little-known mirror from a local university.
3. I selected the minimum install and a few extra packages. Don't go overboard. If you want more, you can install them later. Note that I selected Nano instead of Emacs. I'm just weird, OK!
4. Took a break while setup.exe worked hard downloading. I think Cygwin still has a grudge against me for that! :-p
5. After downloading was completed, I finished the process to close setup.exe.
6. I made a zip copy of c:\temp\cygwin-setup\ in case I fubar my installation. That way I can go back to a minimum build. You didn't go overboard a few steps ago, right?
7. Now I reran setup.exe to download any other crap like clisp (I kid, I kid!) that I wanted. Use the same settings as above except for the package selections. Use common sense.
8. I ran setup.exe a third time. I told it to use the files downloaded and install them to c:\temp\cygwin\. I opted NOT to add all the shortcuts that Realplayer likes to force on me. Now I checked to make sure it worked by running the batch file in the directory.
9. After verifying that it works, copy the entire cygwin directory to your flash drive. I put mine under \programs\windows\.
10. That batch file won't work with other computers because it fubars the mount points. After a little bit of experimenting, I figured out a better batch file for portable drives. I use:

    @echo off
    
    rem - required for `man` to work
    set TERM=cygwin
    
    rem - sets home path
    rem - replace LOGONNAME with your log-on name (you can choose anything)
    rem - create this folder by hand
    set HOME=%cd%\home\LOGONNAME
    
    rem - set mount points
    rem - these make the directories and drives, which
    rem - are required to start cygwin, readable
    bin\mount -f -u -b "%cd%\\bin" "/usr/bin"
    bin\mount -f -u -b "%cd%\\lib" "/usr/lib"
    bin\mount -f -u -b "%cd%" "/"
    bin\mount -u -b --change-cygdrive-prefix "/cygdrive"
    
    rem - start shell
    bin\bash --login -i

11. I run this batch file from a simple wsh vbscript (the horror):

    set shellProxy = WScript.createObject("WScript.Shell")
    
    cygwinDir = shellProxy.currentDirectory + "\programs\windows\cygwin"
    
    shellProxy.currentDi rectory = cygwinDir
    
    shellProxy.Run "cygwin.bat"

12. Now run that. Does it work? If so, close everything, unmount the USB drive in Windows, and put try it with a clean computer. It should work in that one two. Now you have a portable Cygwin-based BASH shell on a Flash Drive.

Hope someone finds that useful! Some resources that really helped me out include:

1. Portable Cygwin on a CD discussion.
2. Portable Install on USB Flash Drive discussion.

mutt on cygwin

Have you tried installing Cygwin to 'fool' Bugzilla into thinking it's running on Linux?

have you tried running Evolution from within Cygwin/X?

http://x.cygwin.com/

OS X still is close enough that I can scp -r user@domain:/stuff/ /Users/home/me unlike using a windows lappy.

Install Cygwin and you can do this and much more on windows very easily.

By Win32 I mean everything that a Windows application calls or passes control to that isn't in the kernel.

This definition is over-reaching. There are user mode processes that do not depend on or are even aware of Win32. How about the Session Manager (init process)? It does not depend on Win32, does not run in kernel mode, and yet provides services from the "\SmApiPort" LPC port. What about other intrinisic subsystems like the Security Accounts Manager, the Local Security Authority, the Event Log, and user mode Plug & Play? There are many other services that use Win32 only for the service control interface, maintained by services.exe and the Win32 library interface. They don't care about the Win32 server's internal state, and so cannot be corrupted from it. These are services that have zero windows, the only Win32 specific message destination; they only link to advapi.dll and kernel32.dll, whose functions are handled by the kernel, not the Win32 server. In fact, according to Microsoft guidelines services are never supposed to create windows, exactly because it could be a security problem.

It still maintains shared state that can lead to security violations if it's corrupted, so that internal state has to be considered part of the trust boundary.

Since the Win32 server is a trusted component, taking control of it would mean control of the system.
Are you saying that corruption of Win32's state is unavoidable due to its design, or that Win32 adds too much attack area?

Also, the shared memory extension to X is a performance enhancement. X will run over any communication channel that provides a single reliable buffered stream.

Looking through \BaseNamedObjects, there are exactly 0 shared memory "section" objects that are world-writable. There are 5 that only me personally can read and write to, 3 accessable to SYSTEM and Administrators, and several read-only to everyone. (excluding the sections made by Cygwin; insecure sections made by it to maintain state are a long-known problem) It's possible that there are some insecure sections that are being duplicated among processes (I doubt it as shared objects almost always have names, so they can be found easily: some process has to personally duplicate a handle for you otherwise), but I'm not about to check every unnamed section; perfmon tells me that there are 4171 section objects, more than any other type.
I get the feeling that sections are either used to advertise public information, exchange state between processes in the same security context (like the sections accessible only to me), as a private channel between two processes (I assume data there is checked like any other source), or to memory-map files. They aren't used to store common state information, far as I can tell. That's done in private memory in the service's server process.

Linux is a particularly profligate implementation of UNIX, yes, but I suspect that count's significantly inflated.

In the kernel source, under include/linux/syscalls.h, I counted the number of asmlinkage functions, and got 268. From the filename and contents, I assume this defines the syscall entrypoints. To get XP's syscall count, I counted the number of Nt* functions exported from ntdll.dll, which is 285. If you have a better way to count them...

It's all part of the same distinction. If your communication is over a buffered stream, you don't need to know what's at the other end.

Windows has generic pipes, too. The console, pipes, sockets, anything you can use CreateFile on can all be accessed with the

• The rsync protocol makes sure that only changed data is transferred, so the entire process is quite fast.
• Backed up files are on a normal volume, no compression/packaging, easy to access
• The backed up volume can be periodically zipped up to form a permanent back-archive
• NO media to swap around

I store firefox on a hi-speed usb 2.0 drive. With a custom script (on Windows: yes, a .vbs file - I could have used a batch script but I didn't want a dos window), you can store your profile on the drive. This way I can carry everything with me - my bookmarks, history, and other nice things.

USB drives are useful for more than just firefox. I store some useful Java programs like jEdit and Saxon. I even have a copy of Cygwin for GNU hacking in Windows. Just learn how to use the windows scripting host. Even though it sometimes has lots of bugs (or, more precisely, too many Microsoft programs automatically run wsh scripts without safety measures); it'll simplify your life.

It would be great if windows could ship with a functional, unix-like CLI instead of the barely usable system that ships. Until that day (which may never come), if you have to use Windows there are alternatives.

For starters, try Cygwin. I keep this on my work Windows boxes. It's a lot to install though, so I don't recommend carrying it around on CD to put on other peoples' PCs.

When working on other peoples' PCs, consider carrying the -tiny branch of UnitKit for Windows around on a USB flash drive.

Wasn't MS's Posix layer Cygwin? Isn't that GPL? So its not that its *better* so much as it is the very same thing? Or did you mean Interix? But isn't that Cygwin too?

Install Windows Services for Unix and OpenSSH SFU is a POSIX layer that runs on top of the kernel at the same level as Win32. Cygwin runs on top of Win32. More software has been already been ported to Cygwin, but I find that ssh works better with SFU.

By default, all executables link against this library (and in the process include GPL'd Cygwin glue code). This means that unless you modify the tools so that compiled executables do not make use of the Cygwin library, your compiled programs will also have to be free software distributed under the GPL with source code available to all.

Windows can too so I fail to see the relevance of your point.

VPN will protect you against outside hackers - DES encryption tends to be 56-bit, though, if memory servers (and it may well not), 3DES is a bit more secure.

What the VPN won't prevent is people inside the firewall from sniffing the traffic. This is why I use SSH tunnels to connect over VNC to systems inside my own firewalls and over VPN connections.

I do tend to run Linux/Unix more often than Windows, though, so setting up the SSH tunnel is pretty simple (it's installed by default on most of the OSes I use); it's not difficult to set up on Windows, though, and does provide an extra layer of security. Make sure you pass -2 to the SSH client though, because SSH tends to default to trying both V1 and V2 (this will depend on the implementation of SSH and SSHD used) and there is an issue with SSHv1 that can be exploited.

For Windows, I personally use Cygwin http://www.cygwin.com/, but there are plenty of other alternatives out there that don't have the installation overhead that Cygwin does.

To add to the list...
MinGW - because you need a good CLI. (Alternatives include Cygwin)
Vim - Better than emacs =)

For VIM I use the Project plugin, which gives me just enough IDE like stuff.

The M$ C compiler runs fine from command line, you dont have to use the Visual Studio.

Works very fine for me.

Firstly, it seems very odd to be moving development from unix to windows. Unix is designed for development. Windows is not. I would seriously take a look at your reasons for doing this.

Secondly, it would be a very rare and odd thing for your unix code not to be easily portable to the Windows environment. Cygwin is for that.

Yep.

Actually, Windows NT can do fork() without the hacks that cygwin currently uses to make it work. The undocumented NtCreateProcess kernel function is capable of doing this.

One mailing list discussion about this.

You invited flames, so here you go.

Read me lips: this is open source software. OSS works because people get a buzz out of developing software that is more effective, more efficient, less buggy, or just plain achieves something that nothing else (free) can do.

There aren't many developers out there that get sufficient joy from making a point-and-click installer to donate hundreds of person-hours of their time. OTOH there are plenty of developers who get paid for doing just that, but their wages have to get paid somehow.

So if you want a point-and-click installer, then there are plenty of alternatives around. You may have to pay for them, and if you don't want to pay then you may have to put up with something that fails on the effectiveness/efficiency criteria I outlined above - that is your choice.

FWIW I've installed SpamAssassin on my MacOSX Powermac (using sendmail and procmail) and it is just about the easiest built-from-source installation I've ever performed on the Mac. The documentation is good, it told me what dependencies it had (I don't like using CPAN). I'm "not even close to a newbie" either, but looking at the Windows installation instructions I can only conclude that (like much *nix OSS software) Windows isn't the best platform for SA.

If you insist on wanting to build OSS software from source on a Win32 box, I really suggest you try cygwin.

You have to install Cygwin first.

Don't I know it.

I am typing this at work on a Pentium III Windows NT 4 system with 256Mb ram. Contractors get all the crap hardware (and software for the matter).

Try java development with that, my head hurts (I've got plenty of time to think about it while the hard drive continually swaps).

Still I have introduced other developers here to linux tools for linux developers forced to use windows.

Would prefer to be using my favorite dist but you can't get everything you want can you?

It is possible to use cygwin and the GPL Linux version of X-Chat in Windows, thereby avoiding the shareware license (which I personally find violates the GPL because X-Chat uses GPL libraries).

media wiki is built on PHP, served from a webserver and keeps its data in a database. Currently I am running Apache and mysql. I believe their are windows ports of both available, as well php. Here are a few links.

http://us4.php.net/manual/en/install.windows.php
http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/4.0.html
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia/
http://www.cygwin.com/

I have not heard of anyone installing it on windows, so if you do get it running you may want to consider documenting your results and post it somewhere for others who want to follow in your footsteps. If you decide that it is to much effort, Linux generally installs very well on older hardware that can be had for virtually pennies.

Oh, and I feel safe enough from a slashdotting now that the thread activity has decreased, here is my website http://butsuri.homelinux.net/. It is on a dynamic IP but freely hosted through dyndns.

I fail to see how Microsoft using Linux code in Windows would deny me the choice of running "pure" Linux instead, if that's what I wanted to do.

It would cause lawsuits with MS patents. That is the problem. MS is a large corporation with many lawyers. Most GPL authors are not, so MS would end up winning by default because the Free author would not have the capability to defend themselves. This could easily result in Linux being so burdened with lawsuits that no one would want to distribute it. Look at the SCO mess now, and just imagine if SCO actually had $50 billion, instead of $50 million, and imagine if they actually OWNED some patents and copyrights.

The GPL is designed to protect the rights of both the user and the author and insure that anyone that distributes the software shares the wealth of information. The BSD license is not even remotely close to this. For some things, I prefer a BSD style license, but not the core OS that everything runs on.

However, since they can't use Linux code, I'll point out I am denied the choice of purchasing an operating system that has the capabilities of both Windows and Linux.

Cygwin lets you do that now, and has for several years. Run Xwindows, perl, all the utilities (grep, gawk, bash, etc) and even run daemons. And yes, its released under the GNU/GPL.

Well... you can still use windows, just install Cygwin, and there you go! Perl, sox, shell scripts, whatever. Get 'er done!

"In accordance with section 10 of the GPL, Red Hat permits programs whose sources are distributed under a license that complies with the Open Source definition to be linked with libcygwin.a without libcygwin.a itself causing the resulting program to be covered by the GNU GPL.

"This means that you can port an Open Source(tm) application to cygwin, and distribute that executable as if it didn't include a copy of libcygwin.a linked into it. Note that this does not apply to the cygwin DLL itself. If you distribute a (possibly modified) version of the DLL you must adhere to the terms of the GPL, i.e. you must provide sources for the cygwin DLL."

Yes, it was fixed some time around 1-July-2004. See http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2004-07/msg00015.h tml. Try a snapshot if you want to test this.

If you can get past the horrible, horrible installation, Cygwin is a pretty nifty piece of kit.

However, in a commercial environment there is one tremendous downfall to using Cygwin. The Cygwin.dll library that does all of the translation from Unix to Windows system calls is under the GPL. NOT the LGPL. This means that if you write an application and build it against the Cygwin libraries and plan to distribute it, the only license you can legally put your software under is the GPL. This is the only case of the "virulent" nature of the GPL that we've witnessed firsthand and I must say it is a particularly nasty one.

For more info:
read the FAQ.

How about a version of dd for Windows? There appears to be a standalone version here (including some usage examples), or you can install Cygwin.

rsync -avz -e ssh winbox:/cygdrive/c/ /path/to/backup

Or one thing I use, to keep incremental backups, is rdiff-backup.

(Responding to a sig. Bad Pete!)

Windows doesn't have any native bzip2 support, but it is available from cygwin.

Cygwin bzip2.

-Peter

Cygwin and rsync. That should do it.

-molo

C:\CYGWIN\usr\X11R6\bin\run.exe XWin.exe -multiwindow -clipboard

This runs the X server in a rootless mode that does not require a window manager (Windows is your window manager - this instructs the X server to in turn instruct windows to draw decorations around your X client windows) and which performs clipboard integration. There are some other switches you can set, see man XWin for more information. In particular people with multiple displays will want to set another switch to support that, and there is also a switch to specify that all clipboard contents should be 8 bit (no unicode support.) It's not the fastest nor the best* X server out there, but it certainly does the job. If you are going to be running X clients locally, which you probably will if you install cygwin, you will want to add "DISPLAY=localhost:0" to your environment.

* Actually, cygwin's X server might have recently become the best X server around. It uses directdraw to draw windows, it properly handles the clipboard now which X-Win32 still can't seem to get right after an update they explicitly claimed would solve my clipboard problem, and it uses standard X tools like xhost for management.

Jon.

Slackware was my first distro too can't remember the version, but it was pre version 1 - old man :-(.
I've just installed Vector Linux 4.0 on my laptop and on an older desktop - it's a good way into a fast efficient no-frills linux system. I'm a windows developer so my work laptop is a w2k machine, to make it bearable I've installed niceties such as bash, gvim and perl. You could use Bochs machine emulator to run w2k under linux. If you dual boot, you can use thunderbird email on a dual boot system with a single mailbox.

Vector linux is easy to install and configure, forget all the folks who think a gui is essential for everything, as a windows developer you'll already know how to hack your way through the registry and various config files. That's all you need to do with slackware too.

Oh hm, you must have forgotten about Cygwin ... or about U/WIN (created by David "ksh" Korn) ... or NT's own POSIX subsystem (as pathetic as it is)... Cygwin and U/WIN are both so complete you can run X Window on them, need I say more? Of course you can run *x apps on Windows, and it's been possible for some time now.

Moll.

No it's not. Cygwin has been doing it for years. It's the thing to use when you want a decent command line on Windows.

Hello. I have /bin, /sbin and /usr directories on my Windows 2000 machine. And they have useful stuff in them, too...

You can get a good toolset and shell on windows by installing Cygwin. Yes, it does have the drawback of being a big download, but at least it's only one download instead of several hunt-and-peck sessions of downloading. Cygwin provides all of the standard unix tools you mentioned: nice shells, grep, awk, sed, tar, and yes even perl and XFree86. The programs mostly behave the way you expect, because they're compiled from the same source code as the linux versions. You will find some bugs in Cygwin but none so bad as to cause data loss or hinder productivity.

Cygwin isn't as good as the command line environment in Linux (cause it's slow, has bugs, and requires third-party download), but it goes a long way towards filling the gap.

Unfortunately I can't recommend any Windows program to fill the role of apt-get....

For business, I run FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows XP. I've yet to find anything that I use that doesn't run on all three platforms just fine.

Via the Cygwin installer you can install most of what you get with a Linux distro. Other stuff that I use, like dvdauthor, ifo and vob editing tools, OpenVPN, etc, readily compile and run on Windows XP in addition to Linux and FreeBSD>

There's no reason for *anyone* not to feel "spoiled" by the large amounts of free, high-quality, software available!