How To Install Xfce On Cygwin
Swan is a Linux-like graphical desktop for 64 bit Microsoft Windows based on Cygwin
Key Features
Xfce 4.4 on Cygwin. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED. But I want to install this xfce in a > different prefix so I have been running autogen.sh and then configure. Performance is decent, quite usable. A little slow down forking a new thread on launch, but barely noticeable. Other than being able to install GNU and XFCE utils (just being able to handle tar.bz2 files in bash is nice), the main benefit is a unified file system.
- X Window system
- Window's window-manager, taskbar and alt-tab integration
- Shared clipboard
- Access to Windows fonts in X
- Xfce 4.12 desktop
- Arc GTK theme and Paper icon theme as defaults
- Uses Window's default browser as Xfce's default browser
- pulseaudio support available with
swan-desktop-audiopackage
- Thunar file-manager
- 'Open here' for terminal, cmd.exe and Windows explorer
- 'Open with Windows' to use Windows file-type associations in Xfce
- Symlinks created in Cygwin are navigable from Windows
- Xfce terminal
- Bash shell with sensible defaults and colors
- Git shell prompt
- UTF-8 support
- Git
- Preinstalled with default configuration
- Http authentication credentials are stored in Windows Credential manager
- gnome-keyring support available with
git-credential-gnome-keyringpackage
- gnome-keyring support available with
- Seahorse GUI to manage and unlock SSH keys
- command-line tab-completion
- Engrampa archive manager handles zip, tar, gz, bz2, xz, and more
- Common utilities
- Busybox provides lightweight versions of many standard utilities
- openssh, wget, nano, git, gcc, python, perl (and more) come pre-installed
spmutility wraps cygwin setup.exe for quick package installation and removal- Install packages from the official Cygwin and Cygwinports mirrors
Screenshots
So here is my story on how I got XFce4 to work on my Windows XP via ssh to my Gentoo.
Installing
- Download the Swan Setup executable (here is the source code).
- Running that will download the cygwin setup executable and install the
swan-desktoppackage in unattended mode. - If Windows 'Smart Screen' prevents execution you can click 'more info' and 'run anyway' to continue.
- Then, find the Desktop shortcut named 'Swan Xfce4 Desktop'. Use that to start Xfce.
- Should you find a bug, or have a suggestion, log it at the GitHub Issues page.
Package Management
The swan-base package includes the spm command, which is a wrapper for the Cygwin setup.exe installer. The spm command aims to make package managment easier, while maintaining compatibility with the Cygwin project.
Here are some example usages:
Debian Install Xfce
spm -u Updates all installed packages. WARNING: may kill running processes to update binaries.spm -S Searches available package names/descriptions. Accepts regex.spm -m Lists dependencies of package(s) that are not installed (yet).spm -i Installs packages. Multiple packages are separated by spaces.spm -t Lists top-level packages that are not needed by any other package.spm -s Searches installed package names. Accepts regex.spm -r Removes packages, but not the dependencies.spm -R Removes packages, and dependencies. Leaves dependencies needed by other packages.
There are more options available, use spm -h to get a full listing.
I have been using CygWin for a few weeks, and I love it.
Now I have found CygWin Ports and, even after reading its main page, I am not sure about the differences:
- Is CygWin Ports a collection of packages valids for my classical CygWin installation?
- Why does de website says
Use the latest Cygwin installers (at least version 2.829)? There is no such version. - What happens when a package conflicts (is in the CygWin repositories too)? Which one should I install?
- Is it possible to download the CygWin Ports packages and manage them from local, just in the same way as I do with the pre-downloaded packages of the classical CygWin?
- Will any addition to CygWin, for example SUDO for CygWin, work too with my installed packages of CygWin Ports?
Any other concise detail about the main difference(s) is welcome.
2 Answers
- Cygwin Ports is a repository of software built on top of, and in addition to, those in the main Cygwin repository.
- The version of the installers refers to the version displayed on the first page of the installer (e.g.
Setup.exe version 2.844 (64 bit)); the latest version from http://cygwin.com is always recommended, but (currently) at least version 2.829 is absolutely required. - There are only a handful of conflicting packages; in each case, the Ports version is recommended over the standard distribution version.
- Ports packages are downloaded with the same installer (albeit with specific installation directions) as the core distribution, so the same three options of Install from Internet, Download Without Installing, or Install from Local Directory are all available.
- Any other software using dependencies from Ports should operate correctly, provided it does not attempt to conflict with Ports' packages. If you have specific issues, please provide details of your issue to the Cygwin Ports mailing list.
Cygwin ports USED to provide a great deal of software not included in the Cygwin repo. However, the guy doing all the packaging, etc. for Cygwin Ports has moved all compatible/reasonably ported software into the main Cygwin repo, which he is maintaining (thousands of software titles) with little help.
There is a queue of harder-to-impossible to port packages waiting for him to have a few spare cycles to work on, but these are increasingly either not used/ not helpful/harder to port packages.
You can build a lot of software not included from source. In addition, they have ported Perl, Python, R, Ruby, and several others, so anything where you have dependencies you can probably get to work on your own, although my best results have been from C/C++ console mode apps. Just read the documentation and make sure you have the dependencies. Some are funky (e.g. need a Windows DLL installed), YMMV.