Kevin Buettner wrote:
> 
> On Oct 6,  1:41pm, Don Harrop wrote:
> 
> > http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/interix/default.asp
> >
> > Has anyone checked out this software for NT systems yet?  It supposedly
> > runs a unix shell capable of running unix programs and scripts natively on
> > an NT box.  Wonder how well it really does?
> 
> I'd like to know too.
> 
> I had occasion to try out Cygwin recently and was quite impressed.  It
> gives you a terminal window running bash and tools like make, gcc,
> gdb, etc. worked as expected.  It's really cool to be able to take
> your Unix sources to a windows box and type ``./configure; make'' and
> just have it work.
> 
> Cygwin is available from http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/.

Considering that we have in Linux a complete development system, OS
and all, that is GPL'd from the ground up, I think the only reason
something like this might not by wildly popular is the general
loathing people begin to have for the M$ environment once they work in
something better :-)

Besides, think of what might happen if people starting using programs
written in C++ and then optimized by a decent compiler on the
Microsoft platform. They might even start getting semi-reliable, at
least in a mostly "sterile" NT box.

Of course, another reason it might not be wildly popular is that
microsoft & OS seem to have focused on a programming language designed
for strictly for beginners (the B in BASIC)... Microsoft might make
decent applications if they made them in C++ or even tried to do them
well (hey, Word 4.0 for the Mac rocked, back in the day, when they
were competing..), but then, they might have to pay their programmers
in wages instead of stock. Besides, think how hard life would be for
the script kiddies if they had to learn C...

-- 
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