Cygwin 1.7 Released

jensend writes "The 1.7 branch of Cygwin, the Unix-like environment for Windows, has reached stable status after about 3 1/2 years of effort. Among many other changes, this release drops support for Windows 9x. Since the NT API and NT-based versions of Windows are more capable and somewhat less of a mismatch with POSIX (for instance, they include a security model), this has allowed for code path simplifications, better performance (particularly noticeable with pipe I/O), better security, and better POSIX compatibility."

Comments

search!

[spongman]

love the search feature in setup.exe !! long overdue, but welcome nonetheless.

Re:Does this do something SFU doesn't?

[Darkness404]

Yeah, but Services For Unix seem to be coming to an end. The download says it won't work on Vista or 7, and the Wikipedia page says it will stop being downloadable at the end of 2009.

Yes.

[amake]

Yes. From the announcement:

- Default character set is now UTF-8, but other character sets are
    supported via an improved internationalization support. See
    http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/setup-locale.html

Re:Does this do something SFU doesn't?

[bcat24]

andLinux only supports 32-bit versions of Windows, for one thing. I'd like to give it a spin on my 64-bit Windows 7 desktop, but I can't. Cygwin may not be ideal, but it has the advantage of actually being usable by me. :)

Re:One question remains...

[DMUTPeregrine]

Yes, Cygwin does run under WINE. And WINE runs under Cygwin. It can be an amusing stress test.

Re:makes windows marginally bearable

[lena_10326]

...but both SFU/SUA and Cygwin are pretty much just different shells on top of the limited cmd.exe window, unless you happen to use rxvt (which is usually not worth the trouble).

What are you talking about? First, only lobotomized moron monkeys would use CMD.EXE. Second, put this

C:\cygwin\bin\rxvt.exe -e /bin/bash --login

into a windows short cut. Set "Start in" to c:\cygwin\bin and it works just fine. Now, how much work was that? Have you got 2 minutes to spare out of your day? Quit your bitchin. Wuss.

What I use:

C:\cygwin\bin\rxvt.exe -geometry 132x60+0+0 -fn "FixedSys" -e /bin/bash --login

because the default font is ugly.

Re:Does this do something SFU doesn't?

[cbhacking]

You missed the part of the Wikipedia page that pointed out the Subsystem for UNIX Applications (SUA) which is the same feature on Vista, Win7, Server 2003 - 2008 R2, and presumeably future releases. There's no sign of it going away soon.

I use SUA (which, aside from install mechanic, is functionally identical to SFU plus some new features) all the time on Win7. My main CLI shell is bash (pinned to my taskbar), I use ssh more often than remote desktop, I use subversion in Interix rather than something like TortoiseSVN, and I once completed a substantial programming project (involving a multi-threaded, multi-process, networked program for embedded Linux) by developing (and testing) on Interix before (testing and) deploying on Linux. It was substantially easier than rebooting, virtualizing, or working remotely on my school's Linux servers.

WINE / Cygwin

[DrYak]

since when does WINE run under cygwin?

It works both ways, although buggy and not fully functional.
And as reported by parent poster, this two redundant monsters are used as test cases to assist developers in perfecting both software stacks (by investigating said bugs and lack of functionality)