Cygwin

What is Cygwin

It is expected that you are a little bit familier with Unix or Linux systems. If not, please read this tutorial first.

For Windows users: Cygwin is the easiest way to test the waters of UNIX while in the safety of your windows environment. You can learn a bit of UNIX easily, or better still can use it to do certain useful things easier than with normal windows software. See this article for a couple of example situations.

(For Linux or Unix users: Don't bother.)

Installation

Installing Cygwin is rather easy, mainly due to the excellent installation program. You need a working internet connection. First visit cygwin website and download setup.exe program. This is a tiny program under 300 kB. Cygwin help pages have extensive information on how to use this little program to install Cygwin. Only some important points are given below. Start by double clicking on the setup.exe program.

1. Select 'Download and Install from the Internet'
2. Go mostly with the defaults. Particularly
   • Default text file type should be 'UNIX'.
3. Select packages:
   • 'Base' and some others are automatically selected, don't deselect them. Additionally, select 'Devel'. Don't bother with the others at this stage, for it is rather easy to add packages as you need them later.

After the installation is finished do the following:

1. Copy the setup.exe file to your installation directory (usually C:\cygwin). We can find it there easily, if we need to download additional packages later.
2. It is possible to use cygwin within the Windows 'cmd.exe' (the 'dos prompt'), it is much easier and fun to use one of the x-windows based terminals. My choice is the xterm. However, with modern high resolution displays, x-term's default font size can be hard to read. To overcome this, one can start xterm with the following command:

   xterm.exe -fn '*18*'

   It sets the font size to 'one of those fonts of 18point size'.
3. It is possible to 'map' the whole windows file system to be accessed within Cygwin's Unix shell.
   • Folowing commands will mount the drive c: within cygwin.

When file/folder names have spaces, we should use the forward slash to 'escape' them in UNIX.

mkdir /c
mount c: /c

1. • Then it is possible to navigate the windows file system in c: within the dos shell. For example:

     cd /c/Documents\ and\ Settings/yourstruely/Desktop/

     will change directory to your desktop. (Replace yourstruely with your username, of course.)

See Also: A_Productive_Desktop_Environment_for_Scientists_and_Engineers