Free Software for m$

[Michael Wittman]

On Mon, Aug 05, 2002 at 02:17:07PM -0500, Derek Neighbors wrote:
> I dont devalue cygwin, but I see more as a tool for *nix folks having to 
> suffer on Windows for some reason.  Not as tool to help aide someone 
> transition from windows to *nix.  That is of course my opinion, but I 
> would rather see us focus on applications that run more natively and are 
> still free software. (Especially ones that also run on *nix)

I use Cygwin on a daily basis and I strongly agree with this.  In terms
of emulating a *nix interface on top of Windows, it's remarkably good.
But it is also (understandably) quite slow and kludgy.  To introduce
people to free software using Cygwin would give them a poor impression
of its capabilities and performance (ironically, due to deficiencies in
Windows) and IMHO would be a mistake.

I would only recommend providing Cygwin to those people who already know
what to expect from a *nix interface, since they will be aware that the
deficiencies are due to Windows and not the free software.

-Mike