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Howso? Various incarnations of gcc have existed for Windows NT/2000 for years. Cygwin and MinGW have both been available for years.

If all you wanted was gcc, then those are a heck of a lot more digestable than a full Linux distribution just to get vi and gcc.

Most people have Word; it comes with many computers sold. And Mac OS until recently had no compiler included (you had to get CodeWarrior or the like, which was as expensive as Visual Studio); now it includes GCC, which is available for Windows with an optional GUI, both Free, though MS won't include open-source stuff with Windows. And Mac OS X's Developer Tools comes on a separate disc (though it comes in the OS box).

And do you want GUI or not? Half your post implies you need command-line, not GUI; the other half, the reverse.

MS are giving out their compiler suite for free (as in beer)

So you want an OpenGL version? It's up to you then.

In all fairness, I don't think that your second and fourth points are very valid.

Yes, WinXP broke a lot of compatibility with DOS and older Windows apps, and in my opinion, it was far overdue; supporting the legacy APIs was hurting Windows. To put things in perspective, the majority of the software that it broke compatibility with was written for Win95 or earlier; the Linux kernel was still in 1.x in 95, and I doubt that you could find any Linux program compiled for a 1.x kernel that would run on a modern system.

Also, saying that you can't program without spending cash on a compiler and libraries is just wrong. I am familiar with at least two free C++ compilers that run under Windows, DJGPP and MinGW. Dev-C++ is also a fairly popular development environment. You don't even have to use Microsoft's libraries, if you don't want to; while I believe the DirectX SDK can be downloaded for free or bought on CD for a nominal fee, you could, alternatively, use SDL or wxWidgets or any number of other graphical libraries.

C:\>strings %systemdrive%\pagefile.sys | more<br>
strings: D:\pagefile.sys: Permission denied

This is a joke, right?

With Slashdot comments being offline, I actually read the article. The interview went on and on, but for the life of me I can't figure out the point of this. Wine lets you run Windows software on UNIX platforms. MinGW lets you run recompiled UNIX software on Windows. What could POSSIBLY be the reason for porting Wine to MinGW? That would let you run Windows software ON WINDOWS. You can already DO that! It sounds like they are trying to reduce dependencies on UNIX in the Wine code. Balderdash. They are just trading them for a different set of dependencies. Sure, it's a smaller set, but it's not like Linux doesn't already run on EVERYTHING. What's the big deal if Wine depends on things in every standard Linux distro? Why reduce the set of dependencies further, other than to waste time?

These guys are caught up in the idea of making the code more beautiful for the sake of beauty. "Fewer dependencies makes it more elegant." They are ignoring the practical realities--don't reinvent the wheel and don't fix what ain't broke. Sure, it's their time to waste, but Good Lord.

Truly, this is the most pointless project, ever. I feel inspired to write a Commodore 64 emulator for my Commodore 64. Object-oriented, with a pre-emptive multithreading message-passing lightweight kernel. That'll be better.

• Abiword - Word processor, supports .doc, .rtf, GPL.
• Open Office - Whole Office suite, including a database frontend and BASIC macro language.
• Perl - Scripting language
• Python - Scripting language
• Cygwin - UNIX emulator. Can create Windows programs, reliant on a cygwin1.dll.
• MinGW - Port of some of the UNIX utilities (BASH, gcc, vi...) to Windows.
• djgpp - UNIX emulator for DOS.
• Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird - Web browser, e-mail client, IRC client, lots more.
• Filezilla - FTP client.
• xchat - IRC client.
• putty, pscp, psftp and others - Telnet/SSH clients.
• Gaim - Client for IRC/Yahoo/MSN/ICQ/AIM and more.
• gzip - Compression (usually better than .zip).
• tar - Extracts/Makes tar archives.
• bzip2 - Totally ace compression (usually better than gzip).
• Info-ZIP - Support for .zip. Good free substitute for Winzip.
• 7-zip - Support for multiple compression formats.
• frhed - Hex editor
• Ext2fs - Several programs for doing Ext2 under Windows.
• Antiword - Converts documents out of the proprietary .doc format.
• MySQL - RDBMS.
• Apache - Web/Proxy server
• sendmail - Mail server
• squid - Proxy server
• freeamp - Audio player
• winlame - MP3 encoder
• cd-ex - MP3/OGG encoder?
• gimp - Very detailed graphics program.
• imagemagick - Graphic manipulation. Provides the 'convert' utility under UNIX.
• freeciv - Civilisation clone.
• gnuplot - Plotting package.
• TightVNC - A fork of VNC, with enhancements.
• RealVNC - The original VNC.
• rdesktop - Access Windows Terminal Services and Remote Desktops.
• Nmap - Well known port scanner.
• John the Ripper - Password cracker. Does NT and MD5.

The code size increase for Mingw's G++ may be due to staticly linking the standard template library that is not available with MSVCRT.dll.

I develop software for Windows using MinGW and MSys. They provide everything I need for development, apart from the IDE, and this release from Microsoft doesn't include that. The Visual C++ compiler is good, but it isn't extrordinary. Why use it over the open source MinGW tools?

I develop OSS for Windows with MinGW and MSys too. Microsoft's tools have several advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages: executables tend to be much smaller because of less static linkage and fewer extranneous debug symbols; debugging is far easier and more powerful; writing libraries as opposed to stand-alone applications is much easier; the other tools in the box are very powerful and useful (think of all the little VC++ helper applications like Spy++); the resource editor is much better than writing .rc files by hand and much better than anything the OSS community has come up with so far; and with the latest .NET versions of their C++ compiler the compiler and libraries are far more standards compliant than they used to be (and more than people like to admit).

Disadvantages: GUI tools (i.e. the IDE and debugger) are not free; there is some confusion about distributing OSS built with their tools (those EULAs are inpenetrable); their tools encourage use of non-standard Microsoft extensions (this is why I do not use their wizards to start applications); and portability is a minor issue. With GCC's g++ I can write for that compiler on multiple platforms, but Microsoft's C++ compiler has minor quirks that exist on a single platform. I like to keep conditional compilation to a minimum.

With MS's latest C++ compiler (and with newer Os's), you need "\r\n" to make a new line. This drove me nuts when I first started doing it. Now, it's not so bad.

That is weird, I do not have this problem. The I/O layer should translate newlines for you. All I ever use in Windows programs (console and GUI) is '\n' and it ouputs "\r\n" as well as reversing it on input. This is in both MinGW and Visual C++

However, considering it cost virtually nothing to get the thing, I don't think this was particularly unfair.

Not to be unfair, but I've got a fairer solution. Just season with a genetic optomizer.

I was going to ask about "why get this if there's MinGW" but I see it's already been asked. I suspected someone would say Microsoft's compiler produces better code. Now where's the evidence? I'm looking for something like independent benchmarks or studying of generated code.

MSI's scope is enormous: it is fully transactional; it audits/logs everything, and it supports every option you could wish for. However, because of this, it is inherently complex and not everyone is using the API: it's gone through 3 versions already.

Can the Microsoft Installer packager work on systems whose only native compiler is MinGW, or does it require a Microsoft Visual Studio license? If the latter, watch free software for Windows (such as GIMP, Gaim, Foobar2000, and the like) stick to Nullsoft's free packager.

GCC has been ported to Windows. If you just want a minimalistic setup, try MinGW (Minimalist GNU For Windows). This just installs things like GCC and 'make' and a few GCC-related tools. If you want GCC with an entire unix-like environment running under Windows where you can do builds that rely a lot on unix-tools, and build programs that assume a unix-environment, I suggest you install Cygwin.

As for the Windows libraries, I'm not sure if the EULA that applies to Visual studio that prevents you from writing GPL'd code also applies to using the Windows librasries with GCC-based compilers as well.

I have a windows box without MSVC

Who needs MSVC anyway?

MinGW doesn't have that problem, IIRC.

MinGW is a native Win32 developer's set that includes GCC and GNU make among other tools. Cygwin is not required.

scientists who use windows buy expensive programming environments and sophisticated scientific software, scientists who use macs have compilers for several languages within the system

Mac OS X comes with GCC. You can get GCC for Windows, or you can get GCC plus a UNIX source compatibility layer for Windows.

The latest version of sh.exe is 465k bytes, it sounds like you have an old version. You should upgrade it. :)

Or even better: MSYS

This way you don't get all that bloaty API stuff since it's using the Win32 API more directly.

I would like to be able to develop tools under Linux that my co-workers could then use on Windows - I can't, unless I shell out tons of money (more than the win, anyways I don't have that kind of budget).

You might be pleasantly surprised to hear that you can have a nice Unix-like shell and GCC toolchain for Win32, free of course. Have a look at MinGW and MSYS for more info. Yes, you can even develop Win32 graphic apps with this too (but you may need to browse the MS developers pages for info occasionally).

Now, admittedly this does not give you window and graphic compatibility with QT or Xfree86, but it does give you a free Win32 development environment. Have a look sometime :-)

MinGW has the required DDK headers and libraries. It's a free download.

Strings is included as a part of GNU's binutils package. There's a native Windows binutils package made by the MinGW folks. Here's the direct link. You'll need to open it in Winzip or another program that can open tar.gz files.

• Cygwin Linux emulation
• Mozilla
• Vim
• XFree86
• OpenOffice
• MinGW gcc
• Apache
• KDE

What do normal users need with a compiler? If you want one you can get one here.

2) It had no INTENDED remote access services such as FTPD or SSHD.

of course it didn't, that's what Windows Server 2003 is for.

3) I was unable to manipulate graphics.

*gasp* welcome to the world of closed source! Companies actually make MONEY here. You can do basic graphics manipulation using Paint, or you can download The Gimp of course, otherwise you should spring for a copy of Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop

4) I was unable to use my Network Card.

5) I was unable to optimally use my graphics card.

6) I was unable to optimally use any piece of hardware that didn't have Microsoft written on it.

What kind of bizarre obscure hardware where you using? Windows XP properly detects alot more hardware then linux does currently.

It takes for ever to do anything in Notepad as compared to Vi.

Then by all means, download vi and use it. Some people like working with this little thing called a Graphical User Interface.

8) I had practically no system logging to speak of.

Windows XP is a desktop OS, you can find all the logging you should ever care for at Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Event viewer.

9) I was unable to use multiple desktops.

10) I was unable to entirely change the appearance of the GUI.

most display drivers come with desktop management software, or you can use Windows XP's quicklogin features to have multiple login sessions. Part of the reason Windows is so successful is that you CAN'T entirely change the GUI. Windows, at it's core, always looks like Windows, even with a skin applied.

11) I was unable to simply download much of the software needed to render Windows somewhat useful. Even though Gimp and OpenOffice run on Windows and GVIM, refer to number 4.

See my answer to number 4.

12) I kept getting "Access Denied" or something along the lines of insufficient permissions even though I believe I gave myself full rights over the system. On Windows 2000 this can be seen even if you are logged in as Administrator.

Wow, Microsoft prevents you from killing critical system processes! What a shock! Oh no! what ever shall we do?!? Seriously though, the only time i've ever gotten access denied is when a file is in use, or you try to kill a critical system process (except XP, which lets you)

13) I had to reboot fifteen times, and four hours later while windowsupdate.microsoft.com told me I needed nearly a GB of updates. Many of which could only be installed one at a time. 14) Then another two hours and multiple reboots becuase of installing device drivers (refer to number 6) and then updating those from the old drivers that were on old disgarded discs in the closet.

with the default install of XP, there are 50 mb worth of updates + sp1, which is another 30 or so, a far cry from the 1 gb you speak of.

15) I had next to nothing in regards to software and production....

Compared to what you get with the average Linux ISO image.... Windows, out of the box, is a pathetic quadriplegic whose wheel chair is missing a wheel.

Then, Microsoft goes and strips so much "functionality" from Windows XP to publicly admit it's "crippled"? What more can you take from it?

They never stripped functionality, it was never there to begin with. Windows XP is a desktop OS for every day users, not for supergeeks.

Disclaimer: I am not pro microsoft nor am i in any way being paid by microsoft for this comment. (On the contrary, i'm working on an open source Microsoft Windows NT Compatible Operating System called ReactOS The parent was a blatant troll and i was simply shedding some light on the truths.

If SFU doesn't fulfill my needs, I guess it's time to look at doing some native ports myself in the near future...

You might want to take a look at MSYS, then. I've not used it, but my understanding is that it's a port of GNU tools that understand native Windows paths, so it might be closer to what you're looking for.

Just based on path issues, it sounds like SFU isn't what you're looking for:

Welcome to the Interix UNIX utilities.

DISPLAY=localhost:0.0
$ cd c:/
/bin/ksh: cd: c:/ - No such file or directory
$ cd c:\\
/bin/ksh: cd: c:\ - No such file or directory
$ cd /dev/fs/C
$ pwd
/dev/fs/C

I cannot figure out for the life of me why the heck Cygwin's GCC was used over MinGW.

Every single binary created by Cygwin's GCC must be linked to cygwin.dll, which is an absolutely enormous performance overhead. GCC would have performed much more strongly had MinGW's GCC been used.

If I buy Solaris I have to pay extra for the compiler

Or use GCC and Lesstif.

If I buy Windows I have to pay extra for the compiler

Or use GCC and the w32api package.

in the process of writing python language equivalents to the most common unix command line utilities (already completed 'grep.py' - then want: make, diff, patch and other tools unavailable on the windows command line) as a learning process

I understand the "learning process" part but have you heard of MSYS?

You can in theory get started developing DXVT even without Microsoft Visual $1000. The free MinGW port of GCC is enough to get DirectDraw running, and there exist some nice DirectDraw wrappers such as the Allegro library.

You can get MSYS from Mingw.Org for a native Win32 port of bash and most (all?) other binutils tools, plus a few other goodies. Works great and is actually (to me) just a bit more convenient than Cygwin.

I tend to prefer unxutils and MinGw.
Why depend on cygwin, when msvcrt is already gonna be there?

Lighter-weight than cygwin is MinGW, a port of GCC that uses msvcrt.dll instead of cygwin1.dll. The stereotypical C hello world works in MinGW as well.

Does Cygwin work well on 9x? You bet your ass it does. However I think you'd do better with MinGW32 and MSYS/gnuwin32.

-uso.
"PathoLogic Linux+GNU" ...well, as soon as I get rid of those headrats...

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.

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?

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.

I think you can do make type targets with the MSYS platform which is a part of the MinGW projects. People have successfully used it with wxWindows (an awesome crossplatform platform {it is more than just a library}), and I plan on compiling with it this afternoon, or tonight.

I think you can do make type targets with the MSYS platform which is a part of the MinGW projects. People have successfully used it with wxWindows (an awesome crossplatform platform {it is more than just a library}), and I plan on compiling with it this afternoon, or tonight.

Just compile it with gcc. gcc is available as a binary for Windows as well.

So you're saying I can compile PHP and MySQL in MinGW? Why didn't the documentation say so?

I suppose one of the problems with benchmarking on Windows with GCC is that GCC does not run NATIVELY on Windows... you need to run it on top of Cygwin or MinGW.

That alone will make the performance hit that Wosniak was talking about. It's strange business benchmarking across two entirely different processors. I think they've done the best possible to balance the scales by using GCC on OSX and Linux (where it can run natively). Maybe they should have run the Dells on a similar to OSX's BSD build for x86 (maybe Darwin, though it's probably not optimized as much for x86) to get even closer to normalizing the benchmark (if it's really possible). Though, I think Linux on workstations is more realisting in the real world than BSD on x86 workstations so it's pretty fair.

In any case, if the 3Ghz G5 happens on the schedule stated by Steve Jobs, the Powermacs running dual 3Ghz G5's should be head and shoulders above the current Intel-based offerings. Of course, we'll have to wait and see what Intel and AMD have available by then.

You know, processor benchmarking is just a geek way of saying "mine is bigger than...". I think it's great that Apple's really back in the performance game, it can only help everyone by re-lighting a fire under Intel, IBM, and AMD to innovate in a contest for (temporary) bragging rights.

Well, there's always the heavy overtones of GNU//Llinux being the only freeware in the world.( at least that's how it seems on /. )
However there are many places on the net that can supply even the lowly Windows user with tools.
Here are a few:
http://www.thefreecountry.com/
http://freebyte.com/programming/
http://www.mingw.org/
^-- ( for those who can't live without gcc/g++ =) )

People have told me before how Objective-C was nice. But looking again now, it looks like it's only Mac OS-X, which is probably why I never looked into it before. I don't want to get locked into coding for a specific platform.

Objective C is fully available for Unix and windows systems, and I'm using it in my latest spare time project. If you're looking to code in Cocoa, GNUStep already provides a very good implementation of the Foundation, and they're working to get the Application classes fully supported under Unix and Windows.

In the Windows world you would probably best use the MinGW toolkit. If you don't plan to use GNUStep/Cocoa, but just the standard Objective C runtime, you'll still want to download the GNUStep runtime. The language runtime packaged with the latest MinGW does not support building DLLs, which can be rather frustrating if you don't know about it before you start. Once you get that built and installed, you're good to go.

I've been very happy thus far working in Objective C. I typically find my code is much smaller than when I work in C++, and its much easier to read and maintain when I'm done. There is something very pleasant and freeing about being able to work in a nicely dynamic language.

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).

So, total cost to develop a GUI application for Windows: $1378.

Really? I thought MinGW could compile non-MFC GUI applications for Windows.

Gcc is good, open, and could use some work, so please think about helping out. My favorite is MinGW which is a really nice and decently maintained Win32 version of gcc and binutils. MinGW also distributes MSYS which is a bash shell and other gnu utilities that make a windows box capable of running a Linux configure script. This allows much easier porting of GNU applications to windows and vice versa. There are several GUI compilers based on MinGW too, see the web page FAQ. A nice GUI GCC based compiler for Win32 is Bloodshed Dev-C++, which I've used.

Cygwin is good too but I prefer MinGW (obviously).

So think about helping out, our tools will only get better if folks work on them.

Gcc is good, open, and could use some work, so please think about helping out. My favorite is MinGW which is a really nice and decently maintained Win32 version of gcc and binutils. MinGW also distributes MSYS which is a bash shell and other gnu utilities that make a windows box capable of running a Linux configure script. This allows much easier porting of GNU applications to windows and vice versa. There are several GUI compilers based on MinGW too, see the web page FAQ. A nice GUI GCC based compiler for Win32 is Bloodshed Dev-C++, which I've used.

Cygwin is good too but I prefer MinGW (obviously).

So think about helping out, our tools will only get better if folks work on them.

The compiler is probably the biggest reason for me to 'switch'.

I am happy with MinGW, a port of GCC to Windows.

for quite some time now.

(Link referenced by http://www.mingw.org/mingwfaq.shtml#faq-cross )

SSH, CVS, Cygwin, XFree86, perl are not giFT dependencies.

Downloading giFT currently requires CVS and SSH. Compiling UNIX code on Windows requires Cygwin, and running it requires an X server. (Or has it been ported to pure Win32 to compile with the MinGW compiler?) The install document lists Zlib, Perl, libDB, libID3, libvorbis, and ImageMagick as strongly recommended dependencies.

but you have to realize that giFT hasn't officially been released

In other words, praising giFT on Slashdot is spreading vapour.