The upcoming release of Cygwin version 1.7 will be dropping support for Windows 9x (Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me). If you're lucky enough never to have to use Windows, Cygwin probably seems like a waste of effort. But, if you're not so lucky, Cygwin is what keeps you sane.
Cygwin is a Linux-like environment that runs on Windows. It provides you with a command-line environment with most of the tools you've come to know and love using Linux. It even provides a number of Linux dæmons that can run as Windows' services, most notably an SSH dæmon.
There also is a port of the X Window System called Cygwin/X, but it appears to have been without a maintainer for a few years. Given that most of the major open-source GUI toolkits now support Windows, lack of the X Window System may not be a huge stumbling block.
Cygwin was started in 1995 by Steve Chamberlain, an engineer working for Cygnus (later absorbed by Red Hat). The earliest mailing list references on the Web are in early 1997, by which time it appears to have been in a functional state.
If you understand programming on Windows and on Linux, and you need some mental exercise, try to figure how you'd implement fork() on Windows. If you want to cheat, check out cygwin/fork.cc in the Cygwin CVS.
We can all imagine a better world, one where our favorite operating system is ubiquitous, but imagine a world without Cygwin. If you have to use Windows now and then, that would be a scary world indeed.
Get it at cygwin.com.
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December 2009, #188
If last month's Infrastrucuture issue was too "big" for you then try on this month's Embedded issue. Find out how to use Player for programming mobile robots, build a humidity controller for your root cellar, find out how to reduce the boot time of your embedded system, and if you're new to embedded systems find out the basics that go into one. You can also read about the Beagle Board, the Mesh Potato and a spate of other interestingly named items. And along with our regular columns don't miss our new monthly column: Economy Size Geek.
"We can all imagine a better
On October 2nd, 2008 Lucky Me (not verified) says:
"We can all imagine a better world, one where our favorite operating system is ubiquitous..."
Lucky me, my favorite operating system (Windows) is already ubiquitous.
fork.cc is a pile of shit
On September 25th, 2008 Alex Besogonov (not verified) says:
Forking implementation in Cygwin is a pile of shit. It's an example how NOT to do forking in Windows.
Fork() in Cygwin doesn't use copy-on-write, it immediately copies all process' memory.
However, NT kernel supports true copy-on-write forks by using ZwCreateProcess kernel function (undocumented, but widely known).
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