Re: Uses for Cygwin/XFree86

[Harold L Hunt II <huntharo at msu dot edu>]

Chris,

Well, I am one of the developers of Cygwin/XFree86 and until recently I 
used it almost exclusively for XDMCP, just as yourself.

However, I have just started using emacs and xfig under Cygwin/XFree86 
to typset some of my homeworks for class.  xfig is really the best way 
to draw finite state machines that can be exported into a format that 
Latex can import, and xfig is, you guessed it, an X application. 
Granted, xfig is not available as a Cygwin package, but it is available 
as a tarball that is easy to install.

Some people use Cygwin/XFree86 for IBM's OpenDX, which is a graphical 
modeling program of some sort that is useful to chemists, I believe.

I also use Cygwin/XFree86 to display X forwarded windows via ssh from 
other hosts... this is more convenient that XDMCP when the remote host 
is running some crap WM like CDE, or when XDMCP logins are disabled to 
save processing resources (like at the cyclotron lab that I work at).  
I would be willing to bet that 95% of the Cygwin/XFree86 users are using 
it almost exclusively for XDMCP or X forwarding; there are simply not 
enough easy-to-install packages available for Cygwin/XFree86 for people 
to be running a lot of local applications.  Granted, there are also 
those users out there that are running KDE and all of  its applications 
under Cygwin/XFree86, but those users are limited in number.

I hope that that reflects the actual user community to a degree, though 
I am sure that others will pipe in to prove me wrong :)

Harold

Chris Plonski wrote:

> I have used Cygwin/XFree86 for a couple of years now almost exclusively for XDMCP.  I think it's one of the best products available for this.  And now with the new rootless mode, Irix seems quite at home on my PC!
>
> However, every time I fire it up in "stand-alone" mode (non-XDMCP) via the startxwin.bat or .sh scripts, I am amazed by the apparent dearth of X applications (with the exception of xterm and xeyes).  Are most people using this product for home-brewed applications or am I missing something really obvious?  I would really like to know what most people are using this apparently very powerful tool for.
>