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The Chatterbox => Computing => Topic started by: Bobbias on October 18, 2010, 11:12:21 PM
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I think I'm gonna use this as a general thread about any adventures I have using Cygwin (the next best thing to running linux on here, lol).
I tried starting an x server using xinit, and it failed. With a bunch of STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION errors, and it finally said xterm Error 29, errno 11: resource temporarily unavailable, and then startxwin worked. However, when I tried using xinit, it tried making a window as large as it could (kinda like running a game in windowed mode, but at full screen resolution) before it errored out. When I used startxwin, it only drew an xterm window by itself. No full size root window under it. Weird.
EDIT: Ok, the option available from the notification area icon had "Hide Root Window" set. Note to self: Don't deselect that.
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Cygwin causes me physical pain. The very thought of someone on MAH FORUMS using it makes me gag.
I've tried to give it a chance consistently since around...1997, and every single solitary time I've messed with it I've been wrought with disappointment for the simple reason that at any given time, half of the shit in it is broken in some way. The most luck I've had with it was around 2000 when I was actually able to get WindowMaker to start without having to perform voodoo rituals in my basement (and I really hate doing that because 2500 candles take a long time to light and I really don't like slaughtering chickens and drinking their blood).
I've given up on it to the point where if I really desperately need to use Linux stuff in Windows, I just fire up VMware (or just dual boot). If I need to cross-compile, I use mingw32 because that actually works. The last thing I used Cygwin for was to compile MegaZeux (http://www.digitalmzx.net/) for PSP, and while I did have some initial success with that (probably because I didn't attempt to type "startx" or otherwise stress it out), the installation mysteriously collapsed in on itself a few months after I was able to get my last build.
I think Cygwin is just self-aware, honestly. It's trying to make humanity kill itself off so that it can rise up and take over.
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Lol, well, I haven't had any real issues yet. Aside from using startxwin instead of xinit, anyway, and that isn't really a big deal. Mind you, I have no ideal how useful I'll find cygwin, but I might as well have it. There are plenty of tools (like THC-Hydra) that only work in linux, and if I can get them working in a cygwin environment, I won't have to deal with vmware or anything.
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Let's just say, in theory Cygwin is perfectly fine. However, in practice, it completely and utterly falls apart when trying to do productive work with it. About the only thing I'd recommend using it for is if you need a more complete development environment than mingw32 can provide, and even then I'm sure there are ways to do it better.
Cygwin would be better if more packages worked out of the box with it. Many source blobs need to actually be modified for it to work around Cygwin's intricacies UNIQUE CHARM.
mingw32 and GnuWin32 should serve most, if not all, practical needs for installing Cygwin, and in my experience they do a much, much better job.