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I would suggest installing Vagrant instead. (http://www.vagrantup.com/ http://www.vagrantup.com/) For example: Start your new Ubuntu machine... $ vagrant ini

by johnmw 13y ago

I would suggest installing Vagrant instead. (http://www.vagrantup.com/ http://www.vagrantup.com/) For example: Start your new Ubuntu machine... $ vagrant init precise32 http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box $ vagrant up SSH in.. $ vagrant ssh And install tmux $ sudo apt-get install tmux *note: these commands are off the top of my head, please read the getting started guide for proper instructions.

dmourati 13y ago
With the current state of virtualization (vagrant/virtualbox for example), I have to wonder why anyone would choose cygwin. Honest question.
- chris_j 13y ago
  It's been a while since I used Windows so I can't really comment on the current state of Cygwin but the one thing that I still recommend Cygwin for is to use the X server if you want to log on to a *nix box and run something graphical.
  - fuzzix 13y ago
    I appreciate people doing work like this. I've worked in Windows-only environments and used cygwin and some window manager (such as bblite) for my workflow. Good to know if I were still relying on that crutch that I could get tmux working. The supplied hardware at these gigs didn't really have the spec for spinning up VMs - this also spared me from fiddly network and other shared resource setup. I even had a "portable" cygwin install on a USB stick.
  - ygra 13y ago
    I used Xming a while back, which seemed to work just as well as an X server, just without the Cygwin horrors.
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  Well one strike against virtualbox that I recently learned is that it bumps the system interrupt from 64Hz to 2048Hz, making it a giant power sink.
- nocman 13y ago
  Real friends don't let friends use Windows without Cygwin. :-D Seriously, though. If you have machines with lower-end resources, who wants to to wait on a VM. Plus I wouldn't trust testing to a virtualized machine. I wouldn't release software without testing it on a real box. Plus, you get cron, sshd, and most importantly a bash shell that works much like it does on Linux. For people who prefer a Linux-like environment, but have to deal with Windows (for work, or for whatever reason), Cygwin is a must-have, IMHO.
  - dmourati 13y ago
    I misread your comment and thought I agreed with everything you said until I re-read it! Wouldn't release software without testing it on a real box? We run all our production software on EC2. Much like it does on Linux? Oh no. Oh no. You are lost my friend.
    - csmuk 13y ago
      This. Cygwin is not UNIX. It looks like it and runs UNIX tools but it has some gotchas that can shoot you in the toes and face if you move your stuff to another box.
      - nocman 13y ago
        I'm not sure I understand what you are objecting to (or what exactly of dmourati's response you were agreeing with) . I never claimed that Cygwin was UNIX. Far from it. However, Cygwin gives me enough of a UNIX-like environment in Windows operating systems to make administering and developing software in them almost bearable. I'd rather not have to deal with Windows environments at all, but my work requires it, so I do the best I can. I don't have any problem moving things from box to box. If I administer a Windows machine, it will almost always have Cygwin on it. I do development and administration on them all the time. I'd be curious to know what kind of "stuff" you were moving to another box that gave you trouble. Perhaps you were talking about moving executables/DLLs between different versions of Cygwin. I keep my machines mostly on the same version of Cygwin, and I'm not developing Cygwin-specific applications, so I'm not linking to the Cygwin DLLS, so I don't have problems with that.
- mtts 13y ago
  Because running a VM still incurs a lot of overhead. Which is a bit excessive if all you want to do is run a terminal.
  - lloeki 13y ago
    > if all you want to do is run a terminal Then Git for Windows (which is built upon MinGW, and includes bash, grep and whatnot) + MinTTY is immensely more useful and lightweight than Cygwin.
    - rossy 13y ago
      Git for Windows uses MSYS, which is actually a fork of Cygwin. Compared to Cygwin, Git's MSYS distro is missing a lot of software and the version of Vim packaged with Git for Windows is a native Windows build (not MSYS-aware,) so it doesn't work in mintty. This can really bite you when editing a commit message or trying to do an interactive rebase. On my machine, Vim will just hang when started from an MSYS mintty.
- rossy 13y ago
  I like to use a familiar set of utilities on Windows. It's not just for software development either. A little while ago I used the Cygwin shell to clean up my downloads folder and it worked like a charm. I also used to have a couple of shell scripts for maintaining my music collection. Spinning up a virtual machine for this kind of stuff seems a little unnecessary, and it seems cumbersome to have to maintain a list of shared folders when I really want my tools to work on whatever directories/mounts Windows has access to. Even when I do work in a VM, I use a Cygwin terminal and ssh client to connect to it. mintty is fairly amazing.
- a3n 13y ago
  You can't (as far as I know) run a Windows program from a linux VM. You can browse around the file system all you want from a VM, but can't do anything binary-ish to the files you find. I work in the cygwin terminal as much as possible on my work Win7 box. I often do this from cygwin: $ OurWindowsOnlyProprietaryLogReader someLog.log which runs the windows program to process the log. Similar with Excel. I do also use a vagrant VM, but I rarely fire it up these days because I do a lot of what I just described. One reason I wanted vagrant was for tmux, and tmux on cygwin will be welcome.
Zombieball 13y ago
I agree, I have had nothing but trouble from Cygwin when I used it.
chris_j 13y ago
I've not tried Vagrant on Windows (or indeed used Windows for a while). Is it easy.to give the VM full access to the Windows filesystem, the way that Cygwin has?
- dmourati 13y ago
  It's easy to map a directory on a Windows host to a vagrant VM. By default, Vagrant will share your project directory (the directory with the Vagrantfile) to /vagrant.
  - martinml 13y ago
    I've found network folder sharing (cifs or vboxfs) to be quite slow and buggy for certain tasks. Is there any known good alternative?

by johnmw 13y ago

dmourati 13y ago

With the current state of virtualization (vagrant/virtualbox for example), I have to wonder why anyone would choose cygwin. Honest question.

chris_j 13y ago
It's been a while since I used Windows so I can't really comment on the current state of Cygwin but the one thing that I still recommend Cygwin for is to use the X server if you want to log on to a *nix box and run something graphical.
- fuzzix 13y ago
  I appreciate people doing work like this. I've worked in Windows-only environments and used cygwin and some window manager (such as bblite) for my workflow. Good to know if I were still relying on that crutch that I could get tmux working. The supplied hardware at these gigs didn't really have the spec for spinning up VMs - this also spared me from fiddly network and other shared resource setup. I even had a "portable" cygwin install on a USB stick.
- ygra 13y ago
  I used Xming a while back, which seemed to work just as well as an X server, just without the Cygwin horrors.
Dylan16807 13y ago
Well one strike against virtualbox that I recently learned is that it bumps the system interrupt from 64Hz to 2048Hz, making it a giant power sink.
nocman 13y ago
Real friends don't let friends use Windows without Cygwin. :-D Seriously, though. If you have machines with lower-end resources, who wants to to wait on a VM. Plus I wouldn't trust testing to a virtualized machine. I wouldn't release software without testing it on a real box. Plus, you get cron, sshd, and most importantly a bash shell that works much like it does on Linux. For people who prefer a Linux-like environment, but have to deal with Windows (for work, or for whatever reason), Cygwin is a must-have, IMHO.
- dmourati 13y ago
  I misread your comment and thought I agreed with everything you said until I re-read it! Wouldn't release software without testing it on a real box? We run all our production software on EC2. Much like it does on Linux? Oh no. Oh no. You are lost my friend.
  - csmuk 13y ago
    This. Cygwin is not UNIX. It looks like it and runs UNIX tools but it has some gotchas that can shoot you in the toes and face if you move your stuff to another box.
    - nocman 13y ago
      I'm not sure I understand what you are objecting to (or what exactly of dmourati's response you were agreeing with) . I never claimed that Cygwin was UNIX. Far from it. However, Cygwin gives me enough of a UNIX-like environment in Windows operating systems to make administering and developing software in them almost bearable. I'd rather not have to deal with Windows environments at all, but my work requires it, so I do the best I can. I don't have any problem moving things from box to box. If I administer a Windows machine, it will almost always have Cygwin on it. I do development and administration on them all the time. I'd be curious to know what kind of "stuff" you were moving to another box that gave you trouble. Perhaps you were talking about moving executables/DLLs between different versions of Cygwin. I keep my machines mostly on the same version of Cygwin, and I'm not developing Cygwin-specific applications, so I'm not linking to the Cygwin DLLS, so I don't have problems with that.
mtts 13y ago
Because running a VM still incurs a lot of overhead. Which is a bit excessive if all you want to do is run a terminal.
- lloeki 13y ago
  > if all you want to do is run a terminal Then Git for Windows (which is built upon MinGW, and includes bash, grep and whatnot) + MinTTY is immensely more useful and lightweight than Cygwin.
  - rossy 13y ago
    Git for Windows uses MSYS, which is actually a fork of Cygwin. Compared to Cygwin, Git's MSYS distro is missing a lot of software and the version of Vim packaged with Git for Windows is a native Windows build (not MSYS-aware,) so it doesn't work in mintty. This can really bite you when editing a commit message or trying to do an interactive rebase. On my machine, Vim will just hang when started from an MSYS mintty.
rossy 13y ago
I like to use a familiar set of utilities on Windows. It's not just for software development either. A little while ago I used the Cygwin shell to clean up my downloads folder and it worked like a charm. I also used to have a couple of shell scripts for maintaining my music collection. Spinning up a virtual machine for this kind of stuff seems a little unnecessary, and it seems cumbersome to have to maintain a list of shared folders when I really want my tools to work on whatever directories/mounts Windows has access to. Even when I do work in a VM, I use a Cygwin terminal and ssh client to connect to it. mintty is fairly amazing.
a3n 13y ago
You can't (as far as I know) run a Windows program from a linux VM. You can browse around the file system all you want from a VM, but can't do anything binary-ish to the files you find. I work in the cygwin terminal as much as possible on my work Win7 box. I often do this from cygwin: $ OurWindowsOnlyProprietaryLogReader someLog.log which runs the windows program to process the log. Similar with Excel. I do also use a vagrant VM, but I rarely fire it up these days because I do a lot of what I just described. One reason I wanted vagrant was for tmux, and tmux on cygwin will be welcome.

Zombieball 13y ago

I agree, I have had nothing but trouble from Cygwin when I used it.

chris_j 13y ago

I've not tried Vagrant on Windows (or indeed used Windows for a while). Is it easy.to give the VM full access to the Windows filesystem, the way that Cygwin has?

dmourati 13y ago
It's easy to map a directory on a Windows host to a vagrant VM. By default, Vagrant will share your project directory (the directory with the Vagrantfile) to /vagrant.
- martinml 13y ago
  I've found network folder sharing (cifs or vboxfs) to be quite slow and buggy for certain tasks. Is there any known good alternative?