Doug McGarrett wrote:
I may be wrong,but I think Cygwin is not Linux, but some form of Unix-- yes I know that they're almost the same--but also that Cygwin has no graphical interface, no GUI. It runs on a Windows platform, as a program. When you run it, you get a black terminal screen with white letters, like DOS or old-fashioned UNIX. What you really want, I think, is a real Linux that stands on its own, with a real GUI, probably KDE, or perhaps not, and modern keyboard/mouse interfaces. Maybe you can make X-Windows run on CygWin, but I didn't succeed. Also, it installs with no word processor (other than the old Unix character-based ones) and not even MC.
Not entirely accurate: CygWin is indeed by Red Hat, but it is not Linux. It's a Unix/Posix compatibility layer for Windows. The main icon you end up with on your desktop as a result of installing it does indeed open up a text console with a Bash prompt, but there's rather more to it than that. Part of the project is a port of XFree86, so yes, you can run GUI applications for X on Windows using that, either remotely, or actually running on the Windows box. A number of Linux/Unix gui applications have already been ported and will therefore run natively under Windows - using CygWin - eg: Nedit, LyX, there are more but I forget them. I only tend to use it to provide a remote X terminal to a nearby Linux application server. To give some idea what's achievable though, KDE itself is being ported across to run under CygWin. I do agree though, that a real Linux system is preferable. :-) -- Rachel