Slashdot Mirror

> I bet Mr. Memory Is Cheap has broadband, too.

Yep.

> I even tried downloading the .ZIP to my shell account,
> where I could hopefully unzip it and delete all the crap I
> didn't want.

Good luck. The zip file contains a large number of archive files. i.e. There's nothing to delete. Besides, what would you delete? It's an integrated office suite. The only things you can get rid of and still get it to run are language packs and a few small utilities (such as Palm support).

> Wadding everything into a single, gigantic file is
> convenient for some people, but it just doesn't work for
> me.

If I might make a suggestion, a cdrom of OOo would go a long way toward solving your problem. Not sure where in the world you are, but they seem to be pretty cheap.

> (MinGW is worse, because their single, gigantic file is an
> .EXE file. I can download it to my shell account, but I can't
> unzip it.)

Cygwin lets you pick and choose your components. Besides, the Cygwin GCC is easier to use than MinGW.

> Incidently, is the software actually called OpenOffice.org,
> or does everyone tack on the ".org" TLD out of habit?

Strangely enough, it is actually part of the name. My W.A.G. (Wild Ass Guess) is that OpenOffice is too generic to trademark. Alternatively, Sun may have thought the name to be "more hip" or something.

Oh, and BTW. Memory *is* cheap. :-P

I have windows installed on both of my PC's. Why? Because there isn't enough application and driver support on Linux, and because the Linux desktop hackers STILL haven't figured out what Apple has known for eons: A consistent user interface is the number one demand for usability.

On the other hand, I've also installed litestep and cygwin to give me some real customizability and a decent command shell.

I've got desktop consistency, a real CLI, application and driver support... All I need now is a real OS kernel that all this stuff will work with. OSS preferred. Any suggestions?

I've tried a good deal of the stuff listed. The following are the most intuitive, free, software products I have encountered. They increase productivity, and are stable.

Freeware List: If you can think of it, it's in here.
OpenCD: Precompiled CD with all open source software.
Doom9.org: Famed site for lots of media tools.
Trillian: AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo! IM software all in one.
AVG Anti-Virus: Free AV
SpyBot (Spam Remover): Free Spam Remover/Search & Destroy
Firebird: Web browser w/ adblock & popup control.
FileZilla FTP: FTP Client
Smart FTP: Free Client, better looking, faster
Kerio: Personal Firewall, better than ZoneAlarm
Textpad: Text Editor.
PuTTY: SSH Client.
CygWin: Linux emulation.
FFDshow: DivX/XVid decoder.
TweakUI: Microsoft's famed Powertoy for Windows XP.
WinAce: Fast, high-compression (40% smaller, faster compression than ZIP).
WinAmp: MP3 player, with this skin.
dBpowerAMP: Music Converter (copies CDs to MP3)

One last thing, don't use Outlook. Find a better program: Eudora, Thunderbird, or PegasusMail (in that order) are safer/more powerful. Windows comes bundled with great software, just like Mandrake - but their internet package leaves much (security) to be desired.

I've spent a fair bit of time playing with various pieces of software, and here's what I keep running on my home PC:

Virus Killer

AVG Anit-Virus, a virus killer from Grisoft where a gratis version (free edition) is available. I'm not sure of its protection level but updates are available fairly frequently.

It's also quite poor in its appearance but it's hard to complain at a free virus killer when it must take a lot of time to maintain such a project. However, I'd not put all your trust in it, keep a wary eye on your system, a false sense of security is not a good thing!

Firewalls

Of the firewalls, I use an old version of Tiny Personal Firewall. They used to do a free version but unfortunately they now charge leaving you with few options other than the 'firewall for dummies' known as Zone Alarm.

Virtual Desktops

For desktop switching, a very useful thing you you program or work with graphics or CAD, there is an app called Multidesk from Tech Superior.

Unlike other products, it's light and onobtrusive. It puts an icon (or several -- your choice) in the system tray and you can switch desktop with a click of the icon or the keyboard shortcuts.

Web Browser

For web browsing, it's hard to beat Mozilla Firebird (formerly Phoenix). It's fast, supports tabbed browsing as is open source. You can get it from Mozilla.org

Web Filtering

Proximitron, a web filtering and page alteration proxy that lets you remove annoyances and even rewrite web-sites on the fly. The product is no longer supported or developed but some sites still have the download, best look at Proximitron.info.

The product is great in that you can match any HTML and replace it with whatever you like. The Proximitron author provides many such filters with the product and clever use of JavaScript allows all sorts of annoyances such as adverts, pop-ups, pop-unders, browser unloads, right mouse disabling to be removed or altered. I'm very sad it is no longer maintained.

Email Client

A good email client is really hard to find. I've been using an old build of the Mozilla suite but Mozilla Thunderbird is looking promising. I've used many other free clients including Outlook Express (discontinued), Sylpheed Claws (poor), et al but they are all flawed in some way. I'm not using Thunderbird yet but I soon will be. You can get it from Mozilla.org.

Email Spam Protection

POPFile, a great, free, open source baysian filter for email, hosted on Sourceforge.

TweakUI

I'm not sure if they do one for XP, I've never upgraded for political reasons but TweakUI has been available for other versions of Windows since Windows 95 at least. It provides a lot of advanced features that Microsoft left out of the rest of the user interface and allows you fix a lot of the common problems such as corrupted icon cache, manually removed applications as well as setting advanced preferances such as double-click rectangle size, etc. A must for any seasoned user running Windows. Available in PowerToys from the MS website.

Cygwin

Ports of many popular tools from GNU etc. that are normally available on a Linux/BSD environment. If you're dual booting Windows and Linux, then these are a must. Available from the Cygwin website.

Virtual Machine Emulation

If you're serious about dual booting, then you may want to cosider VMWare. It's very pricey but a fantastically cool product than effectively emulates an I386 PC and its hardware, allowing a second OS to run in a window on the native OS.

It's a

• CygWin. The Linux-like environment for Windows.
  Mozilla. Use this for mail, news, and browsing if you like.
  Firebird. for FAST browsing.
  WS FTP Light. A FREE, FTP client that works great.
  Filezilla. which is TRULY free and does sftp as well.
  PuTTY. a free SSH client for Windows.
  TTSSH. is a much less clunky ssh client than PuTTY.
  iXplorer. freeware secure FTP client
  VNC hello!? remote controll software.
  Tight VNClike the original, only FAST.
  GNU-EMacs for Windows. just trust me ;).
  Dev-C++a free C++ compiler for those who can't afford VS.
  NetHack. as someone here said, you MUST have NetHack installed on everything...
  Free-AV.free Anti-Virus software for Windows, (mandatory these days). or
  AVG Free edition. another free Anti-Virus software for Windows.
  Zonealarm. my favorite Personal Firewall,, really!. or
  Kerio. another firewall that some seem to like. or
  Sygate. yet another firewall. whatever floats your boat.
  Boingo. to see where the closest hotspot is, hehe.
  OpenOffice 1.1 the Microsoft Office KILLER :) {really!}
  Winamp 2.x for audio/video usage in Windows, stay away from the new one :).
  Mark's Adding Machine is much better than the Windows calculator.
  SpyBot Search & Destroy The best Ad-ware / Spyware removal tool we've found, "IE is unusable without".
  Ad-Aware another spy-ware app "alas poor Windoze."
  Trillian a favorite IM, since we're all chatters @ heart. or
  GAIM since trillian hogs resources, "bad piggy!".
  Gimp image creation/editing. Who needs Photoshop anyway?
  EnZip freeware Zip Utility, Stop nagging you WinZip!!
  Iview is a great little image viewer. or
  Irfanviewone of the best image viewer out there for Windows.
  Audacity is a great little sound editor.
  Virtual Dub. a great video editor.
  cDex gotta rip those cd's for the RIAA!
  MAME for games, period. Free. You can buy some ROMs, or *ahem* ask around. and finally
  XPantiSPY since XP is E-V-I-L.

And FINALLY, don't trust me! Trust the experts;

Go to the Pricelessware site maintained by the alt.comp.freeware Usenet group.
The

These are some of the free (speech or beer) software I'd install on a family, non-gaming machine:

• Web Browser: Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird
• E-mail: Mozilla (cross-platform), Mozilla Thunderbird (cross-platform), Evolution (Gnome), or KMail (KDE)
• Office Suite: OpenOffice.org
• Media Player: QuickTime (Windows), Zinf (cross-platform), RealPlayer (cross-platform), WinAmp (Windows), MPlayer (Windows), XMMS (Linux)
• Image Viewer: IrfanView (Windows)
• Instant Messaging: Gaim (cross-platform)
• Personal Information Management: Palm Desktop Software (great PIM suite even if you don't own a Palm)
• Other: Acrobat Reader (although I'm weary of their DRM), Java 2 Runtime Environment, Macromedia Flash and Shockwave players, Ad-Aware (spyware remover for Windows), ZoneAlarm, Sygate Personal Firewall (firewall, alternative to ZoneAlarm), Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus, FileZilla, WinRAR (not free, shareware with nag window), Ofoto desktop software (basic photo album and touch-ups, even if you don't use Ofoto's online services)

Some other software I'd install on my own desktop (dev), in decreasing order of importance:

• Cygwin, bascially all packages
• UltraEdit32 (45-day trial shareware)
• TightVNC
• Ghostscript and GSView
• Java 2 SDK
• Eclipse
• Borland JBuilder Personal
• ActiveState Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk (yes, even though they are in Cygwin), Jython
• GIMP
• POV-Ray
• At least one of Apache, Tomcat, or Plone (Zope)
• HTTrack (a website copier)

Total Commander
Personally, I can't tolerate the pathetic excuse for a file manager that is Windows Explorer.

And while we're at it, Cygwin is a handy thing to have.

As for the rest, everyone has their own preferences for image viewer, text editor, universal IM client, IRC client, etc etc etc.

Here is my top ten list (in no particular order) for Windows. I'll let everyone argue about the Linux tools.
CygWin the Linux-like environment for Windows.
Mozilla naturally.... Use this for mail, news, and browsing if you like.
WS FTP Light a FREE, FTP client that works great.
PuTTY a free SSH client for Windows.
VNC remote controll software, NOTE: the location is no longer on the ATT Labs UK site.
GNU-EMacs for Windows. I usually install it, but use Vi more.
Dev-C++ a free C++ compiler. I use VC++ 6.0, but this is free, and I think it's pretty good.
NetHack You MUST have NetHack installed on everything...
Free-AV free Anti-Virus software for Windows.
Boingo to see where the closest hotspot is. (free) you don't need the service.

I was recently doing something similar but lightweight, moving some code between Linux, OS X and Windows. The way that worked for me was to just use a central CVS repository then check out on to the relevant platforms. Three Windows "killer apps" in this were: cygwin, which doesn't suck nearly as much as it used to and has a way handy gui package installer; Tortoise CVS which is how CVS should be done; and Dev C++ which, if nothing else, is the most convenient way of getting gcc, free software Win32 API's and all the other dependencies up and going on Windows.

Worked for me :)

Dave

Starnet for example charges $245 for their X-server.

On the other hand, Xfree86 on Cygwin is free - as in beer and as in Xfree license.

You press start to stop the computer.

The graphical shell lacks some things. Does it have a way to search for file names by regular expressions, by exact substring/phrase, or even by all the words? I can't get Windows 2000 to search by anything other than any of the word stems.

Slashdot's 'lameness filter' sucks. I can't even post a snapshot of failed wget session. Anyway:
wget http://progressive.warnerbros.com/thematrix/us/med /revolutions_640_dl.mov

And when it fails after 20 times try again using the partial:
wget -c http://progressive.warnerbros.com/thematrix/us/med /revolutions_640_dl.mov

Don't have wget on your Windows box? Install Cygwin

I think the parent poster means something a little more like the way the Cygwin installer works, not just the option to roll your own if you know what you're doing.

I agree that would be super cool. I've thought about rolling my own with Morphix, aimed at apache/perl/postgres development with minimal CD access (ie, cooler laptop). But it seems like a big project and I haven't got time.

So, Dark Lord Seth, here is your opportunity for fame and/or Profit!

Make such a critter.

Better yet, make the "Custom Live Linux Maker" live on a miniCD itself, fetching the required packages from Debian or wherever, storing everything in an approved space on the local HD, and burning a nice CD at the end.

It's right here or here.

to be honest, i don't understand the motivation for using vc++ in a non-professional (read: outside of work) capacity in the first place. i realize the $99-$129 "professional version" price tag that i've seen, and the even cheaper academic pricing, are not too shabby compared with "enterprise" pricing... but they're still more expensive than $0! there are more than several freely available alternative compilers for win32 machines - cygwin gcc, borland (debugger also), djgpp, open watcom, lcc, MinGW, and Digital Mars (nb: haven't examined the license in detail) to name a few. can anyone else shed some light on why a developer might prefer vc++, or under which circumstances vc++ might be considered a clear-cut better choice than one of the alternatives listed above?

Oh come on......

No NFS support
Ok, no good free clients that I know of, but plenty of commercial ones - or you could use samba

broken kerberos support
Non-windows clients and servers can communicate using the GSS-API (RFC 1964) protocol

no NIS support that I know of
If you don't know then don't say it

no ssh client or server
Ok, you really are clueless - ever heard of Cygwin?

no X server
See above

Ok, I feel better now.

If you want POSIX compatibility under Windows you are better of using Cygwin or - at the shell level - the native ports of GNU utilities to Win32. Add to the mix my Outwit tools for Windows interoperability and you are set.

Diomidis Spinellis - Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
#include "/dev/tty"

Except for learning and using the MS tools (Active Directory, IIS, ACLs etc.), making yourself a home is the best thing you can do.

Most *nix Software has been ported either directly by the developers (Emacs, Vim, nmap etc.), MinGW or CygWin. Insecure.org's tool list gives a nice overview over the essential networking programs and ActiveState has Ports of your three favourite scripting languages already.

use cygwin and you'll have most if not all the unix tools you need. also that's free.

Install CygWin and have a true bash shell on Windows.

1. cygwin

I mean, if you want to use Windows applications, just install the Windows that came free with your computer. For the cost of Win4Lin or Wine, you can get a whole nother hard drive to dedicate to Windows, and it will be fully compatible.

Yes, but that means you have to dual boot... I stopped doing that a decade ago. It was a PITA, and you lose state -- if I'm working on something in one window, and need to work on something else, I shouldn't need to reboot. I often leave 3-4 windows up with development stuff (code, running programs, log files, etc) while going off to do other stuff. If I have to reboot in order to do "other stuff" then I have to quit out of any files I'm editing, close all my windows, and reboot... odds are I won't remember precisely where I was in the coding cycle when I come back to it unless those windows are still present.

It would be even worse if the documentation for the project (largely in Word docs, some in a wiki) meant I had to reboot everytime I wanted to view the latest copy.

Dual booting is a kludge IMO.

On a related note, how come there are no Linux emulators for Windows? Is it because Windows has better alternatives to any Linux program, or is there some sort of GPL patent issue?

Nice troll.

It's because the Linux/Unix/POSIX APIs are clearly documented and well known (which is not true for the Windows libraries). In fact, Windows uses most of the very same system calls. Many Linux programs are portable and can be compiled not only on other Unix systems, but also on Windows. Cygwin is a port of the basic Unix libraries and a boatload of Unix utilities, along with an X/Windows Server, to Windows... there are also cross-compilable graphics toolkits like Qt that help in porting graphical apps.

The better bit is particularly funny... the best Oracle client I've used is TOra, which was originally developed for Linux and cross-compiled to Windows. The best MP3 tagger I've found is EasyTag, only available on Unix systems. Most of the better programming tools are Unix oriented, with backports to Windows (if ported at all).

oh, you mean cygwin. or maybe knoppix

This is the programming system that is so powerful that the virus writers all use it for those HTML and Outlook email viruses. And the documentation is very complete and thorough. And it's on every windows machine. These languages also have an object model that can be used to program every aspect of a windows client or server machine, including active directory. Look up WMI and ADSI to learn how to use VBSCript and JScript to totally control your windows system or entire network. Also, you can look up those two keywords on Amazon if you want to spring for a book. Furthermore, there are web sites with lots of free scripts that run on Windows.

Plus, you can get free cygwin tools from cygwin.com that will enable you to program in all those GCC languages.

Plus, you can download a FREE Java environment from the Sun website. Mostly command line.

Plus, you can download for FREE, the entire suite of .NET Framework programming tools, at this web page, provided you are willing to live with Command Line tools! You are slashdot, are you willing to live with command line tools to use FREE C# and so on? It's a big download, though.

Plus, you can download FREE perl and Python, already compiled and adopted to Windows from Active State.

Wait -- there's more! Batch files! The latest 32 bit OS's have a powerful batch system with real if-then-else structure! And, on XP, it's even documented !.

Wait -- there's more! Inside Cygwin, there's emacs, and inside emacs, there's Elisp!.

Complete enough for you?

No? Okay how about free command line C++ compiler from Borland?

If the poor kid must deal with Windows, install cygwin. Show them a little about how to manuever in the bash shell. Show them how to read the relevant newsgroups for the language(s) that they're interested in. Buy them an introductory book or two. They can do shell scripting, python, perl, c, c++, guile, whatever. They could use a simple text editor, or you could introduce them to vim. If the kid is really interested in programming, this is real programming. If the kid isn't really interested in programming, then this thread doesn't pertain to them.

The next thing you should do is install a real operating sytem for them. Or short of that, download Knoppix (Linux which boots from CD - doesn't affect what you currently have on your hard drive). Save work to a floppy or CD-RW.

My knee-jerk reaction to "What can be done to improve the situation?" is to point out the obviousness of Linux. Tons of libraries. Lots of compilers. Piles of documentation. Mommy and daddy may not like the idea of a different operating system installed on their computer, however. A lot of people are fiercely opposed to anything that changes things they don't understand. That was always my experience. I was fearless, nobody else was.

So, let's give the kids a lot of pros of Linux on Windows. Send them to this web site. While Cygwin is good, it isn't great. You lack a lot of the flexibility (especially in terms of libraries) but it'd be very useful for beginner programmers who are only going to write programs using console based I/O and little else.

How about setting up cygwin under Windows? A quick trip to www.cygwin.com and you can be programming away within minutes. Also, you wouldn't be limited to just BASIC. Just about any language you could think of is at your disposal with a cygwin setup.

Where I'm working right now (TimeSys), I've been involved in contributions to Eclipse and Cygwin. Here's some advice:

ASSUME THAT YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO RELEASE ANYTHING WITHOUT PERMISSION.

If there's no clear policy already in place, ask. You probably don't have the authority to act as an agent of the company with regard to making decisions about IP. (If you don't know for sure whether you have that authority or not, you should assume not until someone tells you otherwise.) Keep pushing the suggestions/requests up the chain of command until you reach someone who has the authority to say "yea". They may still tell you "nay", but at least you'll be getting a decision on the matter instead of an "I can't make this decision, I don't want to bother my boss, so I'll just say no" response.

START WITH SOMETHING SMALL.

In my case, it was getting permission to submit patches to correct bugs - very small, very simple, very non-threatening things. The argument was that we could submit the patches, or go through the pain of developing the same patches again with each new release of the software we were using. That's a good way to get the foot in the door: show that there's a benefit to submitting patches that outweighs any perceived risk. If you can show that you spend X days out of every release cycle generating the same ol' patches again and again, it's an even more convincing argument.

DON'T PUSH TOO HARD.

For some companies, this is a big step to take. Let the folks who make the decisions think about the idea, answer their questions honestly, and be persistent without harassing them every day about the issue. You don't want to have them tell you "no" just so you'll quit bugging them.

BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU GET.

I don't mean that when you get the first "no", you should give up. You need to be reasonable in your expectations - IMHO, submitting patches for bug fixes is fairly minor, and the reaction to that request should give you an idea of how receptive your maangement might be towards the idea of more substantial work & contributions.

My employer lets us submit bug fix patches freely for one project, at the developer's discretion. Minor feature additions in the same project require approval, which is generally easy to get. Other projects require management approval for all patches, no matter waht. Some projects that require copyright assignments are still in the "we're considering it" phase, and may never be approved. We've contributed at least one large chunk of original code to a project, and are considering doing it for a couple of others, as well, because while we want the software to have feature X, we don't want to have to maintain feature X. That's a pretty good argument to try if you're trying to get approval to submit a patch that adds a feature or functionality to an existing project :-)

They use cygwin

If the issue is convincing colleagues to switch over to non-conventional-Windows solutions, I would at least spread the word about Cygwin, which is a good switch over environment. It gives them a chance to use Linux (and assorted "free" software) on top of Windows.

I used to work for a company that did government contract work distributing radio frequency calculations, and we basically all had dual-booted linux/win2k boxes with Cygwin running on the Win2k side. Cygwin was where I got my walking-feet for eventually pursuing the use of Linux whereever I could manage.

As for Visual Basic...ewwwww! I work in an all Windows shop now, and they are all anti-Unix, for no good reason other than they are intimidated by the command line. However, using Cygwin (setting up your build system, versioning, etc), would be a good way to convert people slowly, and still be able to fall back on Windows-related development apps. The more I look around on the web, it seems like there's so many ports of popular, quality Unix development packages/apps to Win32, that the mythic oppositional relationship of WindowsVsUnix doesn't really exist so much. Everything's so hybrid. Have you seen all those jokes on Slashdot where people post about running Cygwin on top of Wine on top of Unix...etc etc...?!

Well, I use it to export NFS shares and it works just fine. I don't use the source code compatibility stuff or the tools - you're right they're half-assed - I use cygwin and the ActiveState stuff instead.

In particular, their Windows development tools and office suite still completely outclass the OS equivalents.

I have to call bullshit on this one. Microsoft development tools (i.e., those sold by Microsoft) are, contrary to popular religion, not the cat's hind end. I'm a developer and I've found that Visual Studio .NET and Source Safe and nearly every other MS "product" I try is the most ridiculously bloated and cumbersome tool imaginable. I really can't understand how people use them to do real work.

The GNU/OpenSource/POSIX LIDE or Loosely Integrated Development Environment (e.g., autoconf, automake, make, gcc, etc.), however, is standardized for nearly every platform now (yes, including Mac OS X and Windows) and Just Makes Sense(tm). By this I mean these are good, simple and extremely flexible tools which are configurable to work the way you do (not work you the way its developers want to). If I see another god-damned fscking "IDE" which "tightly" (meaning inflexibly) integrates to a broken source control system like CVS or VSS and doesn't easily allow me to drop-in my own replacement like Subversion or Perforce, I'm going to vomit.

By the way, these are also the same tools which are used to teach computer science and programming courses in Universities across the world (at least for now). Graduate with a BS in computer Science and chances are, unless you came from a crack-pot or sell-out operation, you are already trained in their use and can develop software for nearly every popular platform on the planet.

As far as office products are concerned, I'm not a publisher, but I do write a fair amount of documentation and give a number of presentations annually, and I find that OpenOffice 1.0.1 (distributed with RedHat 8.0) is more than sufficient for my needs and is being improved at an amazing rate. In fact, our entire office (business and technical staff alike) uses it without complaint.

You know, there *are* XFree86 subsystems for Windows and MacOS X...

-uso.

I wonder how long before we see RedHat XVII for windows..

bash for windows?

check out Cygwin

Oh, and I do the server management from a Linux system.

Maybe the purists will still hate the idea of 2K underneath, but this is essentially encirclement, demonstrating to management the benefits of Open Source before they make the big leap. Perl and Bash certainly beat WindowsScriptingHell.

what exactly do you mean they have to "X-window into the linux servers..."

The Cygwin install contains a Windows binary of XWindows. It works great!

According to the FAQ you can compile it on Windows using Cygwin. On the subject of ports, Mac OS X users may be interested in MPlayer OS X.

I'll help here:

Server side:

Uncomment line in sshd_config, enabling:
X11Forwarding yes

Client side (Unix, GNU/Linux):

Client side (Windows):

Get Cygwin/XFree86. It has an easy installer wizard featuring on-the-fly download of packages: just select XFree86-base among the available packages, and the SSH client too if it's not already selected. Easy as cake!

Fire up your X server - there are a number of ways to do this, try peeking into the startx.bat file. Anyway, use the -rootless switch to make the X server window run minimized, and have each program start in a separate window in the Windows environment. If you want native Windows decorations, try -multiwindow.

After that you have access to a nice bash shell, where you can run the same commands as above for Unix, GNU/Linux.

If you prefer a native win32 SSH client, get PuTTY and enable 'X11 forwaring' in it's preferences window for each host.

Was plain old X11 even considered? If it was, and it didn't meet the criteria, then in what way was it found lacking? Too heavy for a 56k dialup connection? I didn't think it was any worse than Citrix there, but I could be wrong about that. You should be able to get a secure connection via SSH tunneling, and that connection can be compressed if necessary -- there is copious documentation for all this, so I won't repeat how to set it up here, but it's very commonly done.

The biggest "obstacle" I can think of is that people will need the X11 server software on their end, but again this isn't a very big deal: there are free versions for Windows (Cygwin and MacOSX (Apple's X11 beta, XDarwin), and of course it is the standard graphical layer for Linux & related systems.

So really, what needs to happen if you go forward with this idea is for some work to go into packaging it up for students & faculty to use, and giving enough training to show how to get going with it. There are a lot of resources out there that can be relied upon, should the state choose to take this path. It sounds to me like what you need most is for someone to make the pitch to those who are making the decisions.

Got Cygwin?

bash, {bin,file,sh,text}utils, gcc et al., X windows -- all for free from redhat and your friendly neighborhood free software hackers. Most any X or command line utility will respond to the standard "./compile; make" dance.

Just because you use Windows doesn't mean you don't deserve a real commandline...

Cygwin comes with ash, ksh, bash, and zsh in the default install, you could pretty much build any shell.

I need to cheeck out LiteStep, does it integrate into the system well? One problem with Cygwin is it's only aware of Cygwin processes - a ps or top won't show you IE for example.

who thought RH would manage to get a "Designed for Windows XP" certification!

Perhaps Red Hat Linux 9 includes a port of User Mode Linux designed to run on top of Win32, with DirectXFree86, or something.

The embedded tools version of Microsoft Visual Studio is included free with the eMbedded Visual Tools 3.0 sdk, available from here.

Download MVT 3.0, the PPC 2002 SDK or Smartphone SDK and you have everything for embedded mobile development. Assuming you have a Windows PC on which to install it.

However, I agree it sucks for them to not have a free compiler available for their OS, but I suppose that reflects the focus of their company. Which explains the presense of GCC on Win32 I suppose.

Talking of which, there are a few free compilers for Win32. LCC-Win32, MinGW and DJGPP (for DOS, based on GPP) are particular notables. I think Cygwin includes a port also, amongst the unix toolset.

The Xbox SDK is a subset of the Win32 SDK. Nintendo doesn't publish SDKs for it's gamecube, Sony doesn't publish (full) SDKs for the Playstation (I know the Linux kit contains a few of the docs though). So why should MS publish the Xbox SDK?

(I also believe MS shouldn't stop people from trying to mess with their Xbox, but that's another issue).

The advantage is that most managers don't like radical changes. Once you have everything you need running under CYGWIN and the next MS OS bug appears, you can very easily drop Win2K and move to Linux because your apps are already Linux compatible.

there never was a DirectX 4.

Odd, then, that you can find help, support and training for it, software that requires it, and even bugs in it then.

Now GNOME and KDE are also available for MS Windows users.
The porting is done using Cygwin ( http://cygwin.com/xfree/ , the XWindows for MS Win32 )
Project are :-
1) CyGNOME at http://cygnome.sourceforge.net/
2) KDE-Cygwin at http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/

Nope - that's what Cygwin is for :). Even though they suggest against it, I have Cygwin's /bin directory in my Windows path - meaning that I can use common Unix commands directly from a CMD window. Nothing too drastic has gone wrong ... yet.

Frequently though, when I need to use a command line, I just use the Cygwin bash environment. I dunno - I'm actually fairly good at switching between the two environments.

Just don't forget the important CMD registry entry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor]
"CompletionChar"=dword:00000009

That enables tab completion in (any?) version of CMD. They only set it by default in Windows XP. It's documented in the CMD /? blurb, if you're ever really bored.

Cygwin.

AC

You use Cygwin and OpenSSH, of course.