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Re: The need for cygwin


On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 12:47 AM, DePriest, Jason R.  wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Karthik Balaguru <> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I am eager to know the need for cygwin if emulators like ?VirtualBox,
>> Bochs IA-32 Emulator , QEMU, Vmware, Hyper-V, XenServer are able to
>> provide the linux in windows ?
>> How is cygwin different from those and what are the advantages
>> provided by cygwin ?
>> What are the advantages provided by cygwin ?
>
> Cygwin is not an virtual machine, it is just an API emulator and some
> provided tools to use it.
>
> From http://cygwin.com/
>
> What Is Cygwin?
> Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts:
> # A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer
> providing substantial Linux API functionality.
> # A collection of tools which provide Linux look and feel.
>
> What Isn't Cygwin?
> # Cygwin is not a way to run native linux apps on Windows. You have to
> rebuild your application from source if you want it to run on Windows.
> # Cygwin is not a way to magically make native Windows apps aware of
> UNIX ® functionality, like signals, ptys, etc. Again, you need to
> build your apps from source if you want to take advantage of Cygwin
> functionality.
>
> Other people said it best, you can use cygwin natively on Windows
> without the need to install a driver, without the need to be an
> administrator to install it.
>
> Really, if you don't know how cygwin is useful, that means you
> probably don't need it. ?If virtual machines do what you want them to
> do, there is no need to try using cygwin.
>
> Personally, I started using cygwin years ago when I needed an SSH
> server that was free and would run on Windows.
>

Agreed !
OpenSSH for Windows is a free package that installs a minimal OpenSSH
server and client
and provides full SSH/SCP/SFTP support.

> Since then, I've been able to use it to compile programs written for
> Linux on my Windows system and run them natively on Windows. ?Also,
> bash is 450% better than command.com and at least 275% better than
> cmd.exe.
>

Great !

Karthik Balaguru

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