Mail Archives: cygwin/2007/02/21/19:14:37
Brian Dessent wrote:
> Grok Mogger wrote:
>
>> I recently installed rxvt-unicode. That much was easy. Could
>> someone please tell me how to launch a shell?
>
> First of all, realize that the rxvt-unicode package is X11 only. So you
> need to run the X server first before launching urxvt. And also,
> despite its name, it does not support unicode, since Cygwin itself does
> not really support unicode. The rationale for all of this is explained
> in the release announcements, e.g.
> <http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-announce/2006-05/msg00004.html>
>
> Now, if you don't want X11 then you can use the plain old 'rxvt'
> package. This one is dual-flavor: it uses windows native graphics (GDI)
> if no X server is running, or it does X11 if DISPLAY is set. This can
> be adventageous if you don't want the bloat of X just for some consoles.
>
> In general when launching any rxvt, you normally need to specify
> something with -e to execute. If you don't, you get just plain bash,
> not even "bash --login", so your profile won't be read. Most people
> want "bash --login --interactive" so you should specify that.
>
> There are zillions of other options you can give to rxvt, just read the
> manpage. You can also use ~/.Xdefaults to make these settings so that
> you don't have to specify them on the command line every time. On the
> other hand, if you create a Windows shortcut to rxvt you can just stick
> them there and not worry about it.
>
> An example of the kind of thing I personally use is:
>
> rxvt -geometry 130x60 -bg black -fg gray -cr white -fn "Lucida
> Console-11" -sr -sl 5000 -j -cr white -tn rxvt -e bash -li
>
> You might have to play with the various -tn settings. Good choices
> would be rxvt-cygwin (for when using X11 flavor) and rxvt-cygwin-native
> (for when using W11/GDI flavor.)
>
>> And just out of curiosity, what's the "best" shell option in
>> cygwin if I want my Linux shell on Windows?
>
> You seem to be confusing the concepts of a terminal and a shell. A
> terminal or console is the thing that displays characters, such as
> xterm, rxvt, etc. A shell is the program that interprets commands
> interactively, e.g. bash, zsh, ksh, etc. These are two totally
> unrelated things -- you can run shell scripts non-interactively with no
> terminal, and you can directly invoke binaries and view their output on
> a terminal without a shell.
>
> Cygwin ships with bash as the default shell, same as Linux, so there's
> nothing different there. The choices for terminal on Cygwin are
> approximately:
>
> - native Windows console
> - rxvt, GDI
> - rxvt, X11
> - rxvtu, X11
> - xterm, X11 (or any other X11 terminal that you compile yourself,
> really)
> - third party native, e.g. <http://sourceforge.net/projects/console> or
> putty. With putty there is also cygputty which is kind of a go-between
> that makes putty aware of Cygwin and eliminates some of the problems you
> have when using a native (non-Cygwin) program attached to a Cygwin tty.
>
> Personally, I use rxvt GDI.
>
> Brian
>
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>
Hey, thank you both for responding and taking the time to type
all that. It has helped a lot.
Brian: Yes, I was definitely confusing the concepts of a
terminal and a shell. Thank you for explaining that to me, I
feel like I have a pretty good understanding of it now.
Thanks again guys,
- GM
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