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I think git can meet all of your needs, and personally I love it.
- It's a free, well-established, and well-documented open source project.
- There are plenty of GUIs.
- For inexperienced developers, there are tutorials like this one.
- Here's decent guide to getting password-less authentication via ssh working on Windows to connect to a server running locally on a Windows box (as long as it's running OpenSSH, maybe via cygwin).
- You can use Git hooks to do notifications, run syntax checks, etc.

I think this fork will be fairly insignificant, and, further, that it will increasingly run into problems as desktops and other packages depend more and more on systemd components (that trend was one of the major factors in the Debian decision to adopt it).

Right! Lord knows open source software is known for its hard dependencies on system-specific interfaces, and for its contempt for cross-platform standards such as POSIX.

I mean, if you're on Windows, you're totally SOL if you want to use anything from Linux-land. Likewise, Mac users are totally f*ed if they want to make use of their OS's Unix roots to run Linux-oriented software.

Oh, and BSD users who want to run anything outside the system core? Out of luck. No one's going to bother taking all that Linux-specific code, which never pays attention to POSIX and uses syscall() into the Linux kernel everywhere, for such a fringe distro!

I guess we'll just stay in the world we are now, where everything on SourceForge is hooked directly into the Linux kernel, and the de-jure standards like POSIX and de-facto ones like GLIB are used as toilet paper for the Linux devs' asses.

Everyone knows almost all OSS software only runs on Linux right now anyway. Now it'll just be more of the same, but with SystemD dependencies built in, too! ...

Hmm, I think the LSD has worn off now. Ok, I have another opinion:

OSS software tends to follow portability best practices, where hard dependencies are eschewed when possible. A few corrupt, blinkered projects such as GNOME might decide to build in hard dependencies to SystemD. Most other software won't, because they'd lose portability to every platform other than Linux with SystemD. And most OSS software cares about that.

HAND.

Asynchronous Notification Using Event Objects

[...] The WSAEventSelect function behaves exactly like the WSAAsyncSelect function. However, instead of causing a Windows message to be sent on the occurrence of an FD_XXX network event (for example, FD_READ and FD_WRITE), an application-designated event object is set. [...]

As mentioned, clamav is a part of the Cygwin distribution.

Is there a ClamAV for Microsoft Windows that will upgrade itself (virus definitions and "engine" as some anti-virus programs call it) when needed, invisibly, and on a schedule?

Sure. Is typing:

$ freshclam

easy enough? The process should take all of a few seconds. Scheduling updates is possible any number of ways, including a script, cron, at (the MS Task Scheduler), etc.

ClamWin won't yet do either of these things, according to its FAQ.

$ clamscan [myfile]
$ clamscan -r [mydir]

Looking for a Windows port of any of the hundreds of Unix utilities most of us take for granted is somewhat of an ass-backwards approach. From the perspective of an end-user, first you need a terminal, then a shell, then interpreters, then all the programs.

If you're looking for advice, visit Cygwin and start with the default distribution. Then, instead of pointing and clicking trying to select what you need, install the whole damned thing and spend the next few months discovering and learning something useful.

A Cygwin Tip: To make things livable, be sure to avoid using cmd.exe and use rxvt insetad as your terminal (supports fake transparency, images, custom colors, etc.), and then spend some time customising it, removing scrollbars, etc., as well as selecting a good font (MS Andale Mono works well on Windows systems).

Good luck.

• Aida32, hardware display and diagnotics
• CoolTaskBar to sort out the mess (particularly in Windows 2000)
• FreshUI, tweaking utility
• TweakUI, same as FreshUi, but different options, these two combined give you a lot of different options.
• PowerToys, tweaking utilities. In particular the [Send file name to clipboard] and other options which I cannot work on Windows without.
• Get everything from SysInternals, a ton of wonderful stuff here, too much to mention, but will let you track every file access, every registry write, every debugging message. Tons of great command line tools too. For instance, ever wanted to delete a file only to get a "There has been a sharing violation. The source or destination file may be in use" message ? Where Windows doesn't even know for sure if the file is in use or not. Get Process Explorer from SysInternals.com and type the file name in its [Find][Find Handle] menu. Close or kill the appropriate process if necessary.
• Desktop Manager or FlashDesktops, gives you 4 desktops just like on Linux.
• Alt-Tab Replacement, Gives a screenshot of window Alt-Tabbing, useful when you have multiple unsaved docs open, etc...
• OpenCommandWindowHere, right-click on folder option to open command prompt window at that folder, useful for deep or complicated folder names
• Memstat XP, lets you monitor memory usage in tray, small and simple but not that useful.
• NetMeter, lets you monitor network usage in the tray, small and simple but does not seem to work on all types of network interfaces. Online Eye Pro works better and has lots more options, it's based on WinPCap just like Ethereal (see below).
• TrayMeter, lets you monitor cpu usage in the tray, small and simple.
• WinRAR, unzip anything you want, supports tar.gz, zip, rar, arc, and much more.

Network Utilities

• Xmanager, excellent X-windows manager.
• FreshDownload, Download Manager
• ssh, scp, wget, rsync... comes on CYGWIN
• Putty (and friends), ssh client and other utils (but ssh is part of cygwin and works just as well)
• WinSCP, a wonderful SCP/SFTP client for windows (scp is part of Cygwin but this is easier to use)
• NetScanTools a GUI interface for most command line tools also found in cygwin
• WebDrive, mount various types of network protocols (ftp, http, ssh) as local drives, buggy but useful (RiverFront)
• POPfile the best spam remover I've found so far (works with outlook express and any app)

GNU zip: zip -e archive.zip file1 (file2...) to encypt (password is prompted, repeated). unzip will recognize as an encrypted archive and prompt for password. See also zipcloak. Easy to use GNU zip is included with Cygwin (for Windows), Linux, probably BSD.

GNU gzip: No encryption option.

GNU bzip2: No encyrption option.

WinZip: Look for password encryption options. You can lock files in the archive, but not the archive itself.

WinXP zip (e.g., right click on file, Send To->Compressed/Zipped Folder): You can set up certificates for encryption (Properties->Advanced->Encrypt Contents), but they are not password based, and by default the Administrator has access - probably not done in a form where you can email it. Use Cygwin's GNU zip or WinZip (or, maybe winrar).

Poor man's masking: rename the file from "Eminems_new_song.mp3" to Eminems_new_song.mpthree.txt". Recepient renames to undo the "encyption". Two problems - some email clients rightly block attachment sizes, and once the mail filters figure out your devious trick, they will update their filters. See "Arms Race".

While Boot CDs are great, they won't work with NTFS, and even back then Dos games had a hard time with hardware. Those good old days weren't so good after all.

IMHO, Boot CD's are more geared to evangalists. If you want to work on multiple platorms, I perfer emulation such as Cygwin (Linux in Windows) and Dosbox (Dos for any OS),

I'll believe that when I see it. Shells are nice, but they need a bunch of cool tools like sed, wc, tail, grep, etc. Writing such a complete shell would be essentially rewriting DOS.

Many of these tools are already available through cygwin, a set of GNU tools for the DOS/Windows platform, among other things.

You are assuming word processing/basic app machines, this is not necessarily a valid assumption--I've known schools that do digital video work or teach programs like Photoshop or even use programs such as Lightwave or Maya. These are *not* all that uncommon uses.

For the vast majority of systems, it is, though. On those systems that the extra video card is needed, throw it in. To get to the emac's level of video display wouldn't be more than $50-$60.

Also, on another note, macs now have Quartz Extreme and in 2005 Windows will offer "tiered" user experiences and offload the user interface to the graphics card, an integrated chipset is (likely) not going to fare as well with Longhorn.

Or, it'll be just like windows XP, where you can turn off the new GUI eye candy and use the traditional UI with no problem.

1) It is better. Whether it is worth paying for is in question, but it is better.

2) If you find another CRT, make sure the quality is good, I've seen monitors in some HS's which were so low-quality they hurt they eyes to even glance at.

Depends on the needs. Most labs could do just fine with a good 15" monitor -- the emac's 17" would be overkill. If we're talking about a homogeneous computer lab, than chances are, you can easily go cheaper, especially when buying in bulk.

XP Pro is also useful to programmers et al. Programming tools are free with the mac, they are not with the PC, so if you teach AP (or even basic) computer science you are going to need to fork over more for the PC.

Ever hear of cygwin or mingw? They're free too, ya know. And they run under XP Home.

You are also looking at Windows 2003 Server, which costs a hell of a lot more. MacOS X's unlimited client license is your friend.

Or you run a Linux server, and admin it through a tool such as webmin and save yourself some money on a server. Unlimited clients there, too.

If you are going to factor this in you might as well factor in as well that the Mac is going to cost less to support.

Depends on the IT department. I'd be willing to wager that a good IT policy, and proactive maintenance steps could bring PC and mac support costs to near equity.

Excellent point. I wish I had a mod point for you. The entire sales push from MS/Unisys is that you don't need expensive, knowledgeable Unix admins, all you need are cheap, MCSE chimpanzees to run Windows. Finding someone who really knows Windows enough to make it as easy to administer as Unix is a rare event. (Installing cygwin doesn't count.)