Essential software for Windows - for codework/'experimental' work/ etc.

[Alan Sondheim]

Essential software for Windows - for codework/'experimental' work/ etc.



Yesterday we were at the LinuxWorld convention; at the Free Software
Foundation booth I bought Dan Hagerty, Melissa Weisshaus, and Eli
Zaretskii, Gnu Software for MS-Windows and MS-DOS. This book, published in
2001, contains a cdrom developed for MS-Windows up through NT. I asked if
the software would work on WinXP; the people at the booth didn't know.

Well, it does. It works for Win3.0 up through current. And it's amazing -
a close-to-full suite of linux commands that works in Windows. This isn't
linux; it's a port. Commands and programs include emacs, fold, cut, od,
split, csplit, mv, cp, ls, grep, sed, awk, egrep, gawk, cat, tac, a
version of vi, gimp, etc. Two shells are also included; I'm using bash in
Windows! There is enough material here for a full programming and text
writing/development environment. It's incredible - something I've been
looking for, for a long time. If you are working with codework, writing
experimental work, I think these programs are essential.

There are some tricks - if you do install, back-channel me, and I can tell
you how, for example, to configure bash (which you'll want to do).

I'm now working on a selection of my work for publication; the following
was done entirely in the DOS shell.

Some other packages - mutt, shutdown (it works, and weirdly!), chmod,
chown, chgrp, Groff, RCS, man, make, more, less, shell utilities, TEX,
head, tail, uniq, DJGPP/GCC (compiler) and other programming tools.
(All the flags work too.)

Again - these are unix/linux commands that run in the terminal window of
windows _without_ changing the operating system or isolating a directory.
I can type 'shell' (thanks to a shell.bat I set up) anywhere in Windows
and go immediately to a linux shell emulation. The result of all of this -
I can work back and forth between my linux desktop and my WinXP OS without
changing formats, etc.

The book and disk costs $35 - well worth it.


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editing internet text section by section for a book

p p ls exit h p p p ls ls edit b.txt mv b.txt sb.txt wc sb.txt edit c.txt
mv c.txt sc.txt wc sc.txt ls wc d.txt edit d.txt wc d.txt mv d.txt sd.txt
edit e.txt wc e.txt mv e.txt se.txt ls edit f.txt mv f.txt fs.txt; edit
g.txt mv g.txt gs.txt; edit h.txt mv h.txt sh.txt; mv gs.txt sg.txt; ls mv
fs.txt sf.txt ls mv i.txt si.txt; edit si.txt wc s?.txt p ls edit j.txt mv
j.txt sj.txt edit k.txt mv k.txt sk.txt; edit l.txt mv l.txt sl.txt; edit
m.txt mv m.txt sm.txt; edit n.txt rm n.txt; mv o.txt so.txt; edit so.txt
mv p.txt sp.txt; edit sp.txt mv q.txt sq.txt; edit sq.txt mv r.txt sr.txt;
edit sr.txt ls mv s.txt ss.txt edit ss.txt wc ss.txt mv t.txt st.txt edit
st.txt mv u.txt su.txt; edit su.txt rm su.txt ls wc s?.txt ls cat s?.txt >
second.txt wc second.txt edit second.txt ls rm s?.txt ls wc first.txt
second.txt cd /image ls ls /w ls ls | more ls ?? ls ?? >
/salt/twoletter.txt cp a? /salt/ cp b? /salt/ cd /salt ls edit
twoletter.txt mv ah sah; edit sah p ls h > zz


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