Run X (in the background)
With X installed, you can get graphical UNIX applications on your Windows desktop. Install the following packages from cygwin.exe: - xorg - xorg-xinit
To start X in the background, (create a shortcut which) runs the following Windows command:
c:\cygwin\bin\run.exe /usr/bin/bash.exe -l -c /usr/bin/startxwin.exe
If this doesn't work for you, just open a standard Cygwin (DOS) Window
and start startxwin from there.
Better terminal
I recommend setting up X and let it run in the background. You can
then use a "real" terminal emulator that you're used to from Linux,
like urxvt.
WOT?
There are many odd things in the world of Windows. This is one, ~/ and $HOME can be different (!):
$ echo ~/
//file05/users/torstein
$ echo $HOME
/cygdrive/c
The reason is that the Windows environment variable is set to
something different than what's written in /etc/passwd.
How to delete a Windows process from Cygwin
You must use /bin/kill -f instead of the shell built-in
``kill``` command. The latter of which only knows how to kill Cygwin
processes:
$ /bin/kill -f <Windows PID>
To find the PID of the Windows process holding a particular file, I
use handle.exe. For instance, to kill the process holding the
Maven JUnit runner library, I do:
$ /bin/kill -f $(handle surefirebooter | tail -1 | awk '{print $3;}')
