5 ms·

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with cygwin? I'm not a big Node guy, but I run it on cygwin for the sake of CoffeeScript and I've written a few small Node apps

by endtime 15y ago

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with cygwin? I'm not a big Node guy, but I run it on cygwin for the sake of CoffeeScript and I've written a few small Node apps as well. Hasn't been even slightly painful.

Derbasti 15y ago
Not fast, ugly, bad integration in the OS, often outdated, bad package manager. Well, still better than not having a Unix prompt I guess.
- iambot 15y ago
  pretty much, compared to an integrated terminal like *nix, im a big fan of things "just working"
  - Derbasti 15y ago
    I consistently prefer running a Linux terminal in a virtual machine to running Cygwin natively. And it is faster, too.
    - chromic 15y ago
      This is my preferred unix-in-windows setup as well. Free VMWare player and your favorite distro of linux and you're good to go.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  The minTTY terminal helps a lot. Windows console is, indeed, a horrid environment.
  - endtime 15y ago
    Agreed about Windows console - I use http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    Try Power Shell.
    - contextfree 15y ago
      ... which runs in the standard console, and therefore does nothing whatever to address the problem with the Windows console being awful.
      - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
        It adds a bunch of useful stuff to the Path including select, sort, and ls. The lack of utilities in the standard cmd is my major gripe, what's yours?
        natesm 15y ago
        The emulator itself is absolutely terrible, compared to, say, gnome-terminal or iTerm.
        contextfree 15y ago
        You were responding to someone's complaint about the lousy console window.
      - mikemaccana 15y ago
        PoSH 2+ includes tabs and a method browser IIRC.
    - heresy 15y ago
      PowerShell is handy, but man, is it slow. If you thought text rendering by cmd.exe was slow, wait till you get a load of PowerShell. I don't really understand why the console subsystem in Windows is so slow that it can actually add a significant amount of time to a build with lots of scrolling text. Even the "slow" Terminal.app is a whiz by comparison, to say nothing of Gnome Terminal, or, rxvt.
      - 15y ago
mythz 15y ago
broken paths, broken experience - need to constantly nuke npm caches. I finally got it working but it's tacky.
rbanffy 15y ago
I did a lot of work under cygwin when I had a corporate issued notebook and corporate policies were (at the time) very Windows-friendly (and anything-else-hostile). It made Windows into a bearable experience for a Unix guy. A plethora of compilers, interpreters, tools, toys... It's slow, true, but for development, how fast you need it to be? And there is an advantage (I will regret saying this) in hardware support. You can use a broader selection of hardware with Windows than you can on Linux. Windows can be brain-dead from time to time (it insisted on rotating my notebook screen when I unplugged the rotated LCD) and I never got that Dell to suspend or hibernate to my satisfaction, but, with Cygwin, it's the next best thing after OSX. The first option for developing stuff that won't run on Windows is, of course, a real Unix (the kind that runs X).

by endtime 15y ago

Derbasti 15y ago

Not fast, ugly, bad integration in the OS, often outdated, bad package manager. Well, still better than not having a Unix prompt I guess.

iambot 15y ago
pretty much, compared to an integrated terminal like *nix, im a big fan of things "just working"
- Derbasti 15y ago
  I consistently prefer running a Linux terminal in a virtual machine to running Cygwin natively. And it is faster, too.
  - chromic 15y ago
    This is my preferred unix-in-windows setup as well. Free VMWare player and your favorite distro of linux and you're good to go.
rbanffy 15y ago
The minTTY terminal helps a lot. Windows console is, indeed, a horrid environment.
- endtime 15y ago
  Agreed about Windows console - I use http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Try Power Shell.
  - contextfree 15y ago
    ... which runs in the standard console, and therefore does nothing whatever to address the problem with the Windows console being awful.
    - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
      It adds a bunch of useful stuff to the Path including select, sort, and ls. The lack of utilities in the standard cmd is my major gripe, what's yours?
      - natesm 15y ago
        The emulator itself is absolutely terrible, compared to, say, gnome-terminal or iTerm.
      - contextfree 15y ago
        You were responding to someone's complaint about the lousy console window.
    - mikemaccana 15y ago
      PoSH 2+ includes tabs and a method browser IIRC.
  - heresy 15y ago
    PowerShell is handy, but man, is it slow. If you thought text rendering by cmd.exe was slow, wait till you get a load of PowerShell. I don't really understand why the console subsystem in Windows is so slow that it can actually add a significant amount of time to a build with lots of scrolling text. Even the "slow" Terminal.app is a whiz by comparison, to say nothing of Gnome Terminal, or, rxvt.
    - 15y ago

mythz 15y ago

broken paths, broken experience - need to constantly nuke npm caches. I finally got it working but it's tacky.

rbanffy 15y ago

I did a lot of work under cygwin when I had a corporate issued notebook and corporate policies were (at the time) very Windows-friendly (and anything-else-hostile). It made Windows into a bearable experience for a Unix guy. A plethora of compilers, interpreters, tools, toys... It's slow, true, but for development, how fast you need it to be? And there is an advantage (I will regret saying this) in hardware support. You can use a broader selection of hardware with Windows than you can on Linux. Windows can be brain-dead from time to time (it insisted on rotating my notebook screen when I unplugged the rotated LCD) and I never got that Dell to suspend or hibernate to my satisfaction, but, with Cygwin, it's the next best thing after OSX. The first option for developing stuff that won't run on Windows is, of course, a real Unix (the kind that runs X).