On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Karthik Balaguru <> wrote: > Hi, > I am eager to know the need for cygwin if emulators like VirtualBox, > Bochs IA-32 Emulator , QEMU, Vmware, Hyper-V, XenServer are able to > provide the linux in windows ? > How is cygwin different from those and what are the advantages > provided by cygwin ? > What are the advantages provided by cygwin ?
Cygwin is not an virtual machine, it is just an API emulator and some provided tools to use it. From http://cygwin.com/ What Is Cygwin? Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts: # A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality. # A collection of tools which provide Linux look and feel. What Isn't Cygwin? # Cygwin is not a way to run native linux apps on Windows. You have to rebuild your application from source if you want it to run on Windows. # Cygwin is not a way to magically make native Windows apps aware of UNIX ® functionality, like signals, ptys, etc. Again, you need to build your apps from source if you want to take advantage of Cygwin functionality. Other people said it best, you can use cygwin natively on Windows without the need to install a driver, without the need to be an administrator to install it. Really, if you don't know how cygwin is useful, that means you probably don't need it. If virtual machines do what you want them to do, there is no need to try using cygwin. Personally, I started using cygwin years ago when I needed an SSH server that was free and would run on Windows. Since then, I've been able to use it to compile programs written for Linux on my Windows system and run them natively on Windows. Also, bash is 450% better than command.com and at least 275% better than cmd.exe. -Jason -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
