cygwin

[Kevin D. Clark]

Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> writes:

> Another issue is that the Unix server at Northeastern is going away in
> the spring, and the school is pondering how to teach Unix. While I would
> prefer a dual boot (or VMWare) solution with Windows and Linux, Cygwin
> appears to be a pretty decent solution if you can't have a real Unix
> system, and a good solution for students who only have Windows on their
> home computers. 

Well, I dunno.  cygwin might be a nice crutch for those students who
are learning shell scripting, Makefiles, Perl, etc. but for those who
are interested in learning the Unix/Posix API, cygwin can't hide the
underlying details enough to cause these to not be an issue that needs
to be dealt with.

For example:  every student of Unix learns that file descriptors are
small and semi-contiguous in value -- but under the win32 API, this
isn't true.  If your code depends on this being true, it will break
under the win32 API.

Etc.

--kevin
-- 
"The basic fact remains: the much-heralded POSIX compliance of
WindowsNT is a mere sophistry since you cannot *usefully* access the
POSIX functionality from your WindowsNT applications.  The goal of
POSIX as a portable operating systems standard has been thrown out the
Window and placed in that ludicrous little padded cell called the
POSIX subsystem, a lonely little room without doors -- and more
importantly, without Windows."
  -- Tom Christiansen