For the attention of anyone who has previously downloaded our Cygwin/XFree86 package, or anyone who wants to experiment with running Linux thin-client sessions from Windows workstations without having to play around with dual-booting or network-booting: A new version of CygXF86 is available from http://osie.sourceforge.net/CygXF86.zip CygXF86 allows you to run a Linux thin-client session (i.e. an X-Windows session) within Windows. If you download the zip file and follow the very simple installation instructions, then you will get a "Cygwin" icon on your desktop. Double-clicking this icon will start up an X server and connect to a Linux application server on the network. You can use this (almost) as though it were a native Linux terminal, but you can switch between Windows and Linux just by pressing Alt-Tab. The licences are (AFAICR) a mixture of GPL/LGPL and X11, so it's all properly free software including the bits we've written (which are GPL). This package is similar to what you will get by downloading Cygwin and Cygwin/XFree86 directly from cygwin.com, except that: 1) It will take up a lot less disk space and will be faster to download. 2) It will automatically determine your screen size and colour depth. This should now work under 95/98/Me and NT/2K. 3) It will not be confused by any dial-up interfaces you may have. 4) It is only suitable for use as a thin-client terminal. It doesn't include anything else from the Cygwin distribution such as bash, gcc etc. This is the reason for (1). This is a beta-release. Please send any bug reports and/or patches to me. Please note the requirements: you do need a working Linux server that will respond to XDMCP broadcasts. You can test this from any Linux box by logging on as root and running "/usr/X11R6/bin/X :1 -broadcast". If you get a GUI login screen appearing, then all's well. The .zip file is approximately 18MB. You can check that you downloaded it correctly by using md5sum - you should get: $ md5sum CygXF86.zip 43372284b60e9e386f91bad60f5f6a12 CygXF86.zip Ideal for anyone who wants to sneak a Linux thin-client server into their school network - now you can give everyone the ability to run Linux thin-client sessions without having to disrupt the Windows workstations! Michael Brown http://www.fensystems.co.uk/