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Foreign Linux: Run Linux binaries on Windows without drivers or modification

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Re: Foreign Linux: Run Linux binaries on Windows without drivers or modification

#71

Post by emodendroket »

rbanffy wrote: post #52
mappu wrote: post #10

Cygwin is impressively complete - if you haven't checked in on it recently, there are over 5000 packages in the official repo (that's more than Arch Linux's official repos), and adding the http://cygwinports.org/ repo gives you full KDE, GNOME 3 and Xfce on windows (although KDE has a first-party port). What this tool offers over Cygwin is the ability to run unmodified linux binary-only software for which you do not…

For me, Cygwin makes Windows bearable. It's still Windows, but, at least, it has a proper shell, interpreters, compilers, compressors (no need for WinZip or WinRAR - think about it!) and so on. For the same reason you need MacPorts or Brew on a Mac, you need Cygwin on Windows. Unless you are happy to spend your day in Visual Studio, in which case Cygwin will not be that useful.

cygwin is fine, but if you want to spend most of your time in bash or using software designed for Unix you probably shouldn't be using Windows in the first place.

Re: Foreign Linux: Run Linux binaries on Windows without drivers or modification

#72

Post by emodendroket »

cssmoo wrote: post #14
sz4kerto wrote: post #7

If this can bring me a working * nix shell under Windows, I'd be extremely happy. Windows is great for everything except I have never learned PS as well as I know the * nix shells -- with this, I could enjoy the hardware and proper multi-monitor support, speed and stability (seriously) of Windows and use the * nix command line.

To be honest, and I say this with a massive cringe, after 20 years of Unix I'm more productive with PS in a couple of months! It's quite refreshingly easy to use and I genuinely had no idea how much time I was wasting on parsing streams. Now I feel horrible for revealing my dirty secret :(

Yeah, I think the object pipeline is very nice.

Re: Foreign Linux: Run Linux binaries on Windows without drivers or modification

#73

Post by emodendroket »

fijal wrote: post #34

This is quite funny, since you can't run unmodified linux binaries on other linuxes (that is a binary distribution on linux is generally not a thing and there will always be a distribution that does stuff just differently enough), so a recompilation on windows sounds like as good of a solution.

I remember from trying to use Linux on a desktop machine (and this was like a decade ago so maybe it's no longer relevant) that graphics drivers were often distributed only as binaries.

Re: Foreign Linux: Run Linux binaries on Windows without drivers or modification

#74

Post by freehunter »

emodendroket wrote: post #71
rbanffy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, Cygwin makes Windows bearable. It's still Windows, but, at least, it has a proper shell, interpreters, compilers, compressors (no need for WinZip or WinRAR - think about it!) and so on. For the same reason you need MacPorts or Brew on a Mac, you need Cygwin on Windows. Unless you are happy to spend your day in Visual Studio, in which case Cygwin will not be that useful.

cygwin is fine, but if you want to spend most of your time in bash or using software designed for Unix you probably shouldn't be using Windows in the first place.

Unless you need Windows just slightly more than you need Linux, or your hardware doesn't work properly under Linux, or you need software that Linux, even Wine, can't run. Or your processor isn't even capable of booting Linux, but it can run Windows (Intel Atom Bay Trail comes to mind).

--edit apparently Bay Trail does support Linux. The big hype when it was launched was that it would not, that's where my confusion came in

Re: Foreign Linux: Run Linux binaries on Windows without drivers or modification

#76

Post by fizgig »

rbanffy wrote: post #55
dhimes wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it better than using virtualbox?

It applies a Linux-like polish to a Windows machine. You can manipulate the whole Windows filesystem from within a Linux-like environment. With a VM you get a full Linux environment that cannot simply get to your Windows environment - you get a clear separation between the two. I like to say Cygwin "civilizes" Windows.

I dig the ability to cross into remote file systems transparently (much like PowerShell). Running "df -h //devwinserver1/c$" is cool, as is the ability to clean up cruft when a Nagios disk alert goes off, all from the comfort of my bash shell.

Plus, with Xwin running, I can utilize cluster SSH to make managing Unix servers a bit less painful from my Windows machine (corporate standard image I have no control over).

Re: Foreign Linux: Run Linux binaries on Windows without drivers or modification

#77

Post by Maakuth »

hiperlink wrote: post #67
rlvesco7 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Babun provides an nice layer over cygwin (preinstalled oh-my-z and other goodies) along with an excellent package manager as well. https://github.com/babun/babun

Which is based on apt-cyg AFAIK. And I missed the the ``apt-get upgrade`` functionality in both pact/apt-cyg.

Indeed. It's kind of weird there's no package manager beyond setup.exe in Cygwin. There's even a port of rpm in the package collection. I wonder if Cygwin misses some bigger piece of functionality that is a requirement for rpm. Or maybe it's just good enough for most of use cases.

Re: Foreign Linux: Run Linux binaries on Windows without drivers or modification

#78

Post by emodendroket »

freehunter wrote: post #74
emodendroket wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cygwin is fine, but if you want to spend most of your time in bash or using software designed for Unix you probably shouldn't be using Windows in the first place.

Unless you need Windows just slightly more than you need Linux, or your hardware doesn't work properly under Linux, or you need software that Linux, even Wine, can't run. Or your processor isn't even capable of booting Linux, but it can run Windows (Intel Atom Bay Trail comes to mind). --edit apparently Bay Trail does support Linux. The big hype when it was launched was that it would not, that's where my confusion ca…

I mean, no problem, but, ultimately, cygwin is walled off from certain parts of the system and you're just going to have to deal with the fact that WinNT has major differences from Linux for some tasks. I use cygwin sometimes too but it makes more sense "in addition to" than "instead of."

Re: Foreign Linux: Run Linux binaries on Windows without drivers or modification

#79

Post by fizgig »

gtwy wrote: post #75

Does this support running X over SSH? The biggest drawback for me with Windows boxes was always a lack of X support for applications I want to run on remote servers.

Yes. From the stock bash prompt, run "startxwin". With the resulting xterm, you can launch any X apps within Cygwin, or you can SSH in (with appropriate flags and xauth config, etc.) and blow back X apps from the remote Unix box. It's really nice.

Re: Foreign Linux: Run Linux binaries on Windows without drivers or modification

#80

Post by superobserver »

rbanffy wrote: post #55
dhimes wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it better than using virtualbox?

It applies a Linux-like polish to a Windows machine. You can manipulate the whole Windows filesystem from within a Linux-like environment. With a VM you get a full Linux environment that cannot simply get to your Windows environment - you get a clear separation between the two. I like to say Cygwin "civilizes" Windows.

I agree. And when you add Chocolatey to the mix (just add it with an elevated cmd.exe as stated on chocolatey.org), you're about half-way to a GNU/Linux-ish Windows. (In elevated PowerShell, I actually used "choco install cygwin -y" after doing so!) I think in Windows 10 this is supposed to be even better with their OneGet framework that will be compatible with Choco. Things are looking better for those who have to use Windows but want the power of the GNU/Linux environment. It is thanks to which I no longer need VirtualBox anymore, granting the benefit of allowing me to run code a little more efficiently.

The only gripe I have is I would really like to use openssh-server on Windows the way I do on GNU/Linux. I have yet to find a comparable solution that is opensourced and free.

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