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Awesome Windows

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Re: Awesome Windows

#11

Post by rodgerd »

jongalloway2 wrote: post #8
pmoriarty wrote: post #3

Cygwin is not mentioned on there. I'd rate that critical to make Windows even moderately bearable. The main problem, of course, is that Cygwin is way too slow, but I'd rather suffer that live without it.

What are your main uses for Cygwin as opposed to just using WSL / Bash on Windows?

Any 32-bit edition of Windows, or being stuck on a pre-Win 10 version (corporate desktop, for example).

Personally I prefer to wrap Cygwin in http://www.msys2.org/ these days, which gives me pacman as a package manager.

Re: Awesome Windows

#12

Post by rodgerd »

pmoriarty wrote: post #10
jongalloway2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your main uses for Cygwin as opposed to just using WSL / Bash on Windows?

Cygwin's not just bash (in fact, you don't even have to use bash in Cygwin -- you can use zsh, for instance). There are thousands of packages in Cygwin's package manager, and you can also compile your own using gcc or another compiler you can get through Cygwin.

"Bash on Windows" is pretty misleading - it's really a Linux kernel translator. You can use (supported) three distros, and as long as your Linux software doesn't use any non-translated APIs, it will Just Work.

This is why the default Ubuntu will let you apt-get more-or-less anything from the Ubuntu binary repos.

Re: Awesome Windows

#13

Post by nolok »

pmoriarty wrote: post #10
jongalloway2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your main uses for Cygwin as opposed to just using WSL / Bash on Windows?

Cygwin's not just bash (in fact, you don't even have to use bash in Cygwin -- you can use zsh, for instance). There are thousands of packages in Cygwin's package manager, and you can also compile your own using gcc or another compiler you can get through Cygwin.

WSL / Bash on windows comes with apt-get and the entire Ubuntu repository.

As a former Cygwin user, I consider WSL vastly superior for my uses and have switched for good earlier this month.

Re: Awesome Windows

#14

Post by jongalloway2 »

hibbelig wrote: post #9

I'm surprised about the zsh mention. It seems to run under Cygwin mostly, right? I guess under MSYS2, as well. But there is nothing that mentions this specialty.

On Windows 10 / Bash you can just apt-get install zsh

https://www.howtogeek.com/258518/how-to-use-zsh-or-another-s...

Re: Awesome Windows

#17

Post by tym0 »

rodgerd wrote: post #11
jongalloway2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your main uses for Cygwin as opposed to just using WSL / Bash on Windows?

Any 32-bit edition of Windows, or being stuck on a pre-Win 10 version (corporate desktop, for example). Personally I prefer to wrap Cygwin in http://www.msys2.org/ these days, which gives me pacman as a package manager.

> Any 32-bit edition of Windows

I was quite disappointed when I bought a cheap Windows Table/Laptop to tinker with. And the Windows installer would not let install the 64bit version on 2 gigs of ram...

> Personally I prefer to wrap Cygwin in http://www.msys2.org/

Can you tell me more about that? Isn't cygwin and msys2 two separate project?

Re: Awesome Windows

#18

Post by rodgerd »

tym0 wrote: post #17
rodgerd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any 32-bit edition of Windows, or being stuck on a pre-Win 10 version (corporate desktop, for example). Personally I prefer to wrap Cygwin in http://www.msys2.org/ these days, which gives me pacman as a package manager.

> Any 32-bit edition of Windows I was quite disappointed when I bought a cheap Windows Table/Laptop to tinker with. And the Windows installer would not let install the 64bit version on 2 gigs of ram... > Personally I prefer to wrap Cygwin in http://www.msys2.org/ Can you tell me more about that? Isn't cygwin and msys2 two separate project?

"At its core is an independent rewrite of MSYS, based on modern Cygwin (POSIX compatibility layer)".

So I guess "wrap cygwin" isn't quite accurate, but it's based on the cygwin and extended.

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