[PLUG] tools for windows-haters?

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky znmeb at cesmail.net
Sat Jul 14 16:12:44 UTC 2007


Eric Wilhelm wrote:
> Now if I can just figure out how to get cygwin to *uninstall* anything.  
> For some reason, cygperl came along with that, which will totally get 
> in the way of things.

Is "cygperl" something other than the standard Perl interpreter that
came with Cygwin? I have Windows boxes with both the full Cygwin
install, including Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk and Ruby, plus the ActiveState
Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk, plus the Ruby One-Click Installer Ruby
interpreter, and all live happily side by side with completely
independent package repositories!!

You probably *don't* want to remove either Perl or Python from a Cygwin
install -- lots of stuff may stop working if you do. You might be able
to get away without Tcl/Tk, however.

> <rant>
> Do I really have to go through the list of thousands of packages and 
> deselect things individually by clicking "the cycle glyph" (which 
> causes dependencies to be re-selected, and ad-infinitum ack!)?
> </rant>

Actually, you don't. The simplest thing to do is uninstall the whole
Cygwin distro, then install the bare minimum (default) plus X Windows.
Then if you find something missing, you can find it in the install tree
and just install it -- Cygwin will drag in the dependencies.

> While that would be super-nice, I mostly just need to be able to 
> *launch* graphical apps (at all.)  I can do this with sshd if I 
> configure the service to be able to access the desktop, but the 2s 
> delay is a real bummer.
It isn't clear to me whether you're trying to access Windows graphical
apps or Cygwin graphical apps, or whether you're trying to access them
locally or remotely. So here are some general clues.

1. Remote access to a Windows desktop from a Linux desktop: as I noted
before, either "krdc" or "rdesktop" should work if the Windows system
has the RDP service available and enabled. If RDP isn't available,
RealVNC server on Windows is an option, but a slow one relative to RDP.
I think there is also a NetMeeting client for Linux, but NetMeeting is
(politely put) "deprecated". I usually use a term that *rhymes* with
"deprecated" when referring to NetMeeting.

2. Using a Linux desktop as an X terminal for Cygwin applications
running on a Windows server: I've never been able to make this work.
Apparently there are so many security issues with doing this that there
are lots of configuration options you need to set and permissions you
need to give. But I've never needed it.

3. Using Cygwin locally as a "Linux virtual machine" on a Windows box:
hardly a day goes by where I work that I don't do this -- it's my
principal mode of operation. But I always install the full Cygwin
distro, which is a gigabyte or two.

4. Running "open source" graphical applications on a Windows box: many
of them have been ported to Windows and have one-click installers. LyX
and TeXmacs, two GUI document editors, for example, both work on
Windows, including the native TeX tools they require. The Maxima algebra
package also has a native port. I don't remember about Scribus and
Inkscape but I think they do as well.

The tool I use most is R, and it not only has a native Windows port, the
R Windows port is actually a lot easier to use than the base Linux
version! But in general, when I want to run an open source app on
Windows, my first choice is a native port, second choice is Cygwin, and
if neither of those is available, a Linux virtual machine.


In short, it's possible for a hard-core Linux geek to survive, even
thrive, on a Windows box for 6 to 8 hours a day. Just don't ask me to
explain the *Windows* scheduler. :)



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