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Cygwin's XFree86 4.2.0 on Windows XP
stock writes: "A interesting and important piece of software on the win32 platform for me has always been X11 server software like
Hummingbird's Exceed, or
Startnet's Xwin32 Professional.
Today i glanced at cygwin's site and found that a complete
XFree86 4.2.0 for Windows XP
can be downloaded now! It shouldn't be hard for newcomers as it features a
setup.exe . The package comes free and is basicly licensed as X style licensed software which runs on cygwin32 which has a GPL license." Looks like this has been out since May -- can anyone who's been using it since then comment on how well it works? Update: 07/07 17:12 GMT by T : haroldhunt (project leader for Cygwin/XFree86) wrote to clarify: "Cygwin/XFree86 runs on all recent consumer and business versions of Windows; as of 2002-05-12 those versions are specifically Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP."
I've used it on win2k on a daily basis for over a month now. It runs nicely in full screen mode, which you can Alt-Tab out of. You can also run it in a window, but that's just what I prefer. Make sure you run xwinclip too so you can copy and paste between X and Winders. I've tried a couple commercial Win32 X Servers and although this doesn't have some of the fancy features, I find it more stable.
...downloaded setup.exe just for the hell of it? :)
I've been using Cygwin/XFree86 for about a month or two now, and don't have any complaints. It may be a tad slower than what one is used to, but overall it works quite well. You can also run WindowMaker on Cygwin (comes bundled now), or any other window manager, as long as you can compile it on Cygwin, on Cygwin/XFree86
I tend to use Cygwin/Xfree86 if I ever need an X server on Windows and have always found it to work pretty nicely. I have had it running KDE from another computer on the network, and it's also useful when you want to run the occasional application that needs X on a headless computer.
So yes... I would definitely recommend it. The disadvantage over something like Exceed, though, is that it needs its own window - you can't have the X windows alongside the Windows windows (if you see what I mean). And you can't resize it either, you have to choose the dimensions on startup. But you can also use it fullscreen, and because it uses DirectDraw, it's nice and fast.
It's funny, but I just saw this slashdot article when I was testing an X desktop from a Windows 2000 client running Cygwin Xfree. I'm sitting here right now, typing.
It works splendidly. Unlike with Hummingbird & Co, you get the exact same feel as regular Xfree with regards to font and small behaviour differences - which is good, since GNOME and KDE is targeted there.
It has some funcitonality lacking (imo - the developers seem to regard this as not being their problem): Cut and paste between X and Windows does not work (although I once saw rumors of an experimental daemon to fix this). Non-US keyboard setups must be loaded manually with xmodmap (while imo, Xfree for Windows should support xkbdb stuff).
In other aspects, it's great! Scroll wheel stuff works perfectly, graphics are fast and stable (better than a recent version of Hummingbird Exceed I tested), etc.
Oh, one more drawback - there seems to be a hard coded limit to the window size that prevents me from letting the X desktop span two windows monitors in multihead setup. This should be easy to fix if one feels inclined, though, I expect.
Otherwise, the product is brilliant. Now I can roll out Linux/FreeBSD desktops cheaply and easily, and make the switch from Windows to GNOME/KDE in small steps for my customers. The killer right now is letting them use Mozilla and Evolution through X from a server located outside the firewall: very secure and virusless (and cheap!) Attachments and saved files are available through a samba share. Oh, and let the server run IMAP (to Evolution) and webmail (ssl) from the outside. People get the same folders abroad and at the office.
I'm telling you, the revolution is here.
-- Daniel, www.copyleft.no
I've installed it at home and at work. The only problem is that there are very few ported X applications to run with it and most things do not compile out of the box.
:-). You can of course use it to run remote applications on a unix server (this works perfect).
/usr/X11R6/bin manually before you can type startx in bash. In addition you'll want to change the windowmanager (windowmaker works fine for me). Configuring X on windows XP is actually easier than on linux :-).
I'm running it with a port of windowmaker in fullscreen mode and it looks great. However, the thrill of running xcalc and xclock on windows xp wears off quickly
Another issue I found is that it is not possible to cut and paste between X apps and windows apps. So if you are surfing using mozilla or IE and want to paste some command from a howto into your xterm, you have a problem. You can paste into a bash terminal (i.e. outside X).
The cygwin installation is pretty smooth (lots of great stuff other than X too). However you do need to set a path to
Jilles
XFree86 has been available on Win32 using cygwin for ages. Ok, it might have been 4.10 and it used an (also easy to use) bash shell script for installing it under cygwin instead of a setup program, but this is not really news.
I used the old version for a couple of times on W2K, seemed to work quite well.
Actually, though, what I use are Xclients compiled against the XFree86 libraries. The XFree86 X server doesn't yet have a useable multiple-window mode -- that is, one in which XP is your window manager and each program appears in a separate Windows window. <FLAMESUIT>Since what I want is the superior windows UI with the superior GNU utilities power, the separate window mode is pretty essential. Thus I still use eXceed as my Xserver. </FLAMESUIT>
Work on this capability is proceeding; it is, in fact, the top item on the Cygwin/XFree TODO list:
By the way, if you are setting up Cygwin for the first time, I highly recommend following the procedures outlined at (which largely consists of instructions for ssh/sshd with Cygwin, but has many other excellent setup tips).I find it disappointing that in the article summary no mention is made of the fact that this Cygwin X11 server will run on all the Win32 platforms. I looked at it and said to myself 'well, there's the motivation to "upgrade" to XP' but was hopeful. And yes, the page at Cygwin says 'Cygwin/XFree86 runs on all recent consumer and business versions of Windows'.
Is this a case of unconcious shilling for the Microsoft version upgrade treadmill? I hope so.
I love it and have been running it for a while. I use blackbox as my WM since I only run programs over the network it doesn't get in the way and leaves a tiny footprint.
I get by day to day with Kmail, GnuCash, Red-Carpet and a few other miscellaneous apps that I run over the in-house LAN.
As the subject says I noticed that programs use the same fonts whether I run the program on the Mandrake box locally or over the network, however when I run the progs over the network to the Windows machine all the fonts look nice....??!?!? Is that a feature? I think most the programs just plain look nicer in the Win32 port... maybe I'm delusional...... anything's possible.
I have been using this for about 9 months now for doing xdmcp to a freebsd box running xdm, such as how they suggest. i have found it to be rock solid.
i run the latest server in the server test series. they recently added -nodecoration, which makes the x server use as much of your screen as possible, without any title bar or borders. My xdmcp command line, setup as a shortcut on my win2k desktop, looks like this:
C:\cygwin\usr\X11R6\bin\XWin.exe -screen 0 1600x1200 -from spandex -query lycra -once -emulate3buttons -nowinkill -nounixkill -nodecoration -fp "tcp/lycra:7100"
The -fp option is for a font server, so cygwin/xfree86 will get the necessary fonts from the machine you tell it.
HTH
I compared it some weeks ago with other X servers available for win32, using x11perf (after I noticed how slow it was when scrolling windows).
I benchmarked cygwin, exceed (7.1), omni-X and xwin32. cygwin was by far the slowest, around 10 times slower than exceed for many basic X11 operations. Exceed was about two times faster than omni-X and xwin32.
Exceed is extremely expensive however (a cheap second PC plus KVM switch, dedicated running Linux just as an X-terminal might be cheaper than buying an exceed licence). For most normal text-based remote access, cygwin+xfree will do. For graphically oriented programs (such as running KDE remotely) you'll want something else however.
I have not used this yet, but I will be giving it a try at work on Monday. Based on what I am hearing in comments, it seems to work fairly well.
If I were RedHat, I would make RedHat "Thin Client Edition" out of it. Modify the RedHat install to accept connections and display a X login, or at least have that option during install. I know I have been able to do that before, but all the protocol and service names slip my mind right now.
Once that is in place, marketing can begin. Migrate to centralized (Linux) application management without betting the farm. I know you can easily turn most PC's into X-Terminals, but most people would be more comfortable starting with a Windows Client version first. Offering OpenOffice and Mozilla to "clients" would be able to cover 90% of what low end user needs to do. They can even keep Outlook/Exchange running on their desktop if they don't want to pull the plug on that yet, which is a common reason for staying with windows on the desktop.
If they were to package and market this correctly, it could be the first step in moving into the desktop realm.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
As for UNI*X features not yet available in Cygwin - you mean Gnome ported to win32, do you? At least that what failed the compilation Sawfish and others for me.
Have anyone heard about porting Gnome to win32? How about KDE? I can use Gnome or KDE through X11 net, but how about the case of temporary standalone box? Such win32 port would be a very nice feature then.
Less is more !
You are confusing X Windows with Linux. When you run X Windows under BSD, you are not running Linux on top of BSD. The same is true for X Windows under Microsoft Windows (not simply Windows XP, mind you, but also Windows 9x/NT/2k).
--binkley
Current features we are working on include:
- Native GDI Server - Translate X11 graphics calls into GDI graphics calls; currently we just draw to an offscreen framebuffer and transfer updates occasionally. This allows you to utilize the power of your $100+ graphics processor. Most respectable commercial X11 servers for MS Windows use this method.
- Clipboard integration - We have been working on this for a long time. Currently we have a seperate client, called xwinclip, that provides this functionality. We recently added support for passing Japanese text through xwinclip when running on NT/2000/XP.
- PseudoColor for TrueColor visuals - A lot of applications, particularly drawing or CAD programs, require a palette-based PseudoColor visual, while most people run Windows in TrueColor depths of 15, 16, 24, or 32 bit color. We would like to support PseudoColor visuals when our primary visual is a TrueColor visual. Some commercial X11 servers for MS Windows do this.
Go ahead and try Cygwin/XFree86 if you haven't already. We hope you like it. If you find some missing feature that you would like, then take a look at our source code and read our Contributor's Guide for instructions on how to download the source and build the tree, plus a general discussion of the technologies involved in Cygwin/XFree86. We bend over backwards to make it easier for developers new to the project to contribute.Harold
X WIndows is a server application. You can connect it to, view and operate a remote unix box just like sitting at the remote box's monitor and keyboard.
Get a free ipod.
Since cygwin's setup program is now idiot proof its about 6 clicks and a bunch downloading later and BAM! X on Xp. Just make a shortcut to the startwinx.bat file in the /usr/X.../bin/ dir and you then become |golden boy|. Ofcourse blast out the line in starwinx.bat that kicks of tvm and get a real window manager ( as if you care, but fvwm is my choice ).
For performance sake I keep to just a simple fvwm2 setup. Not to say Xp is great but I don't see a need to duplicate half of the fancy stuff ( email notifiers, clocks, start menus, yada^3 ) by running KDE or something more ontop of your current Xp rig.
To be honest I think the work the cygwin folks are doing is the most complete solution now for your PC. You now get the power and devel environ of Nix and the hardware compatibility and other features of windows. No more dual boot. No more kernel recompiles just to get a USB flash card reader working. Just point scripts to /cygdrive/d where d is drive letter that windows assigned to your hardware.
Only complaint is the file naming problems that occur when your strike off a DOS program with files as arguments. But not a huge issue. ( Compiling Tcl/Tk scripts using the Windows version of tclpro tools, chokes on the file names ). Other than that perfect!
If you are truly sick... Cygwin does come with glut and glu. I'd like to see someone hack something like q3 for linux inside a cygwin session running on Xp or 2000 or whatever illegal bangkok version of the Microsoft OS your are running.
try { println( SigString ); } catch( Exception e ) { println( 'Who cares?' ); }
The main purpose of Cygwin is to run Posix apps under Windows. And if XFree under Windows is now solid (wasn't, last time I looked, but that was a couple years ago), then we now have all kinds of interesting possibilities for migrating Linux apps to the Windows platform. In particular, it'd be nice to be replace the Windows shell and desktop with one of the many open-source equivalents.
There are, of course, non-Posix Windows shell replacements. But I've never liked any of them as much as I've liked the best Linux desktops: KDE, GNOME, Enlightenment. Add your own favorite to the list.
I've had cygwin running for a long time now, and consider it an indispensible tool when sitting in front of a Windows box.
In fact, its made me less keen to trash the Windows install on the only Windows machine left in my house, since it is now quite functional with Cygwin/XFree86.
Now, how do i replace Windows explorer etc. with XFree86 as the only available interface to my Windows machine?
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I think I'll just complain. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"