Cygwin is a linux type environment for windows and i was wondering if anyone has tried it and if it would be worth the download since i have dial up.

its quite pwnsome if you are stuck on windows, I even got KDE 3 running under it at one point, although Cygwin's lockfiles dont seem to like FAT harddrives, so make sure you have NTFS.

Absolutely. It's invaluable for things like C programming under Windows.

If you program for linux mainly, and want to do a quick and dirty windows port (or you need something that is linux-only), then yes, get it. Otherwise, why bother? There are windows C/C++ compilers that will do a *much* better job than cygwin (which will require alot of DLLs and crap), such as dev-cpp or Visual Studio Express Edition

Yeah, but I program C for linux, mainly, so it makes sense for me.

Is there something linux-oriented programming offers you that standards-oriented (libcstd, etc..) programming doesn't?

It's not so much that as the classes that I'm taking that require C programming require you to program for two unix boxes here called Magnum and Robin, both of which have multiple redundant cores, a ton of idiosyncrasies, and are about 15 years old.

i downloaded it without installing so now how would i go about installing it

Huh? just run setup.exe - it will download and then install, its not a complicated process do note that by default, you don't get the toolchain needed to compile programs (gcc, make, autoconf, etc...)

i did run it but i chose download and dont install because i am on a school computer.

well i only use it when i have troubles with corrupted PICs is good for send and receiving by the serial ports another thing that is use it is because the ability of programming for arm architectures...

then when you get home on your computer, run setup.exe again (copying the files it downloaded)

Oh wait, so you can directly access the parallel and serial port from Cygwin, bypassing Windows' stupid protection?

i finished installing it now to read the documentation.

No, you can't. You still have to be Ring0 (user-space programs are Ring3, Ring0 would be things like device drivers and such) for hardware access in Windows (At least, thats what I heard)

Argh. :/ Why does Windows have to be such a massively large pain in the neck??

the thing with the user/kernel levels of the OS (most stuff is user level, only kernel level can access hardware) is that a program then can't take 100% of a piece of hardware. It has its ups and downs.

Its not just windows, you have to be root in linux to get direct access to hardware. But you should be thankful, its errors/crashes in Ring0 that cause BSODs, and the fewer of those the better Just remember the sheer amount of crappy code microsoft has to gaurd its OS from....

Cygwin didn't work well for me. The installer wouldn't stop crashing.

you can acssess directly to the serial port we use it on robotics because of that feature... windows is stupid because it gaves us errors while we trying to send with the program from the atmel but it haven't gave us erros when we send the program with cygwin... that's why we have to use it on robotics, but on the unversity we are all changing to BSD and could be that we will install it on all computers of the univ even those who are regarded to Robotics...