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From: "Markus Mauhart" <Markus DOT Mauhart AT chello DOT at>
To: "Christopher Faylor" <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 21:04:48 +0100
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Subject: Re: (OT) Newbie request for Info
Message-ID: <3A89A170.20020.1F8098C@localhost>
In-reply-to: <20010211170411.A14860@redhat.com>

Christopher Faylor wrote:
> 
>Michael Kelley wrote:
> >
> >I have a basic understanding of C and come from the Mainframe & Windows
> >environments. I'm not ready to jump straight into Linux/Unix so I see a
> >great chance to learn using Cygwin.
> 
> If you're interested in learning about linux/unix, then your best bet is to
> do a to do a google.com search. Since Cygwin is intended for people who
> are already familiar with UNIX, there is no effort made on UNIX tutorials
> for Cygwin.

Christopher, clearly you and your friends know best your reasons
to develop and use the cygwin environment, but why not learn about
other unintended positive side effects of cygwin ?

IMHO cygwin in its current state is the best way for NT programmers
to get used to many 'unix' tools WHILE STILL BEEING PRODUCTIVE.
Whithout cygwin, i could setup a linux machine (did this in 1999)
and play with it for 1 year, but without beeing productive:

Because without beeing an expert who knows what is available, how to
get it, how to configure it and who knows each tool's keyboard commands ..

1st I have no working shell (only 25 lines, no cut&past, no easy to
use line buffer like with NT cmd.exe, the keyboard behaves very unexpected
(home, end, esc, ctrl-left/right, F7..))

2nd I have no working text editor & text browser like borlands or MS's
programming IDE

3rd there simply exist no other file manager comparable with the one an only
NT winfile.exe (dont mix it with the w95/98 version which is crippleware)
which is lightning fast, fully keyboard controllable and allows to easily
browse 2 or 3 directories simultaneously or to switch between many other
directories (given that one knows how to use MDI applications) and is
tightly integrated with the shell (alt-f r cmd enter .. less than 1 s).

4th I have no fast and lean www browser which I need for the documentation
from the web (cygwin & all gnu tools, ..) (IE55 easily can be configured to
the absolutely minimum GUI, you need not be an expert for that, simply
open its options dialog and do it)

5th I have no consistent and rich keyboard interface for all applications
like with windows, where typically all commands are available through
menues and the menue entries have their shortcuts which are displayed in
the menue. E.g to minimize a console window or any other window the sequence
'alt-space n' works today, it worked with win31, and it will work in
5 years on windows 7.0.

6th hence for each real task I have to transfer the files and me to/from
my (NT) workstation.


Now there are uncountable advantages of a unix workstation and its toolset too
as you know. But for someone coming from the windows environment the 1st step to
learn about and use some of them IMO now is cygwin, thanks to your and your
friends efforts during the last years.

Back to what caused me to write this email: I am surprised that you havnt
realized (or dont mind) the fact that cygwin has a great potential to be
the trojan horse of unix & gnu inside the windows world.
When cygwin additionally would come with easy to use and powerfull standard
applications (mail reader, personal mail server & firewall, editor, filemanager;
easy means controllable through consistent menu's shortcuts, help menue -> open doc
in browser, ..), it would be only a small step to use the same applications
under unix/linux and to forget the windows workstation.


Mfg , Markus Mauhart.


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