Hi Tony, I have several Linux distros on thumb drives, but my main reason for wanting CygWin is that if I want to access my network computers or have more power with external drives, I wanted to be able to do so without rebooting my system. I really did not want to have to go to something like VmWare, but maybe I can with Arch or Ubuntu Mate. I mainly use the terminal in Linux, but I like the GUI for a few things, like connecting to WIFI. Glenn ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Baechler" <tony@xxxxxxxxxxxx> To: "Glenn" <GlennErvin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>; "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, November 28, 2015 3:57 AM Subject: Re: CygWin in windows Others have already addressed some of your questions, but since I use it on a daily basis, I thought I would throw in my two cents. On 11/27/2015 2:51 PM, Glenn wrote: > I want to have access to some of the power of Linux. First, it's called Cygwin. Second, it isn't Linux and you'll never have the full power, flexibility and accessibility of Linux within any Windows environment. They're apples and oranges. That said, Cygwin does have lots of packages found in most Linux distros and it's a good learning environment. It lets you run bash, compile software, etc without actually having to install Linux, but see below. > I'm most familiar with Debian-based systems. It's developed by Red Hat, so don't expect Debian commands to work. It does ship dpkg however, so in theory, it could be used as a base for a Debian-like Windows environment. I don't know if it ships apt. It isn't RPM-based. It uses tar.bz2 for packages. > I use Jaws, and the CygWin terminal does not automatically read the > returned information, and I don't like routing the Jaws cursor to read the > terminal. Try say all. I use both Window-Eyes and NVDA with reasonable success. NVDA is the far better choice and has the best terminal support of any Windows screen reader. WE is pretty good, but doesn't always read the text on the screen and often doesn't read the last line of the display. > Can SpeakUp be installed into CygWin? As Gregory said, no. It's not Linux and doesn't run a Linux kernel. You would need either a virtual machine or a real Linux environment. I'm working on a talking live CD based on Ubuntu which might interest you. It doesn't change anything on your machine but lets you boot a fully working Linux system with speech. The way I use Cygwin is probably not typical. I have only a minimal system consisting of bash, ssh and rsync. I ssh to my remote servers and do my work on them, so I don't need a full Cygwin environment. There are good reasons not to install all available Cygwin packages. Cygwin ships X, KDE and Gnome, but I don't think it ships Orca and I have no idea how accessible it is. If you want a talking X environment which works with Orca, I would highly recommend Ubuntu MATE. You can get a VPS for very cheap. Linux will almost always run faster than the same programs in Windows. It's possible to do what I do on an almost daily basis and ssh to the remote server or VPS, do your work and use rsync to download anything you need. If you have lots of disk space, you can of course install a full Cygwin environment, but don't be surprised if it runs very slowly compared to Linux. I haven't used a full Cygwin setup for many years, but part of why I abandoned it is because what took 10 minutes in Cygwin took 30 seconds in Linux, without exaggeration. They are constantly making improvements though and Cygwin is probably better now. As it happens, I can sell a VPS which fits your needs and budget. If you're interested, please let me know what you're looking for and the price range. As I said, you can get them very cheaply and that still gives you the full power of Linux without the hassle of fighting with the very difficult Cygwin setup program. _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
