Cygwin versus Darwin

Posted on 28/11/2005 by Rich

Some time ago I obtained a Mac-Mini. Up until now I have rarely used it. Last week, however, I also upgraded my PC, and have now been brought kicking and screaming into the 21st centuy – it has WinXP on it!!!

Rather than leaving the Mac gathering dust, and considering how little I actually use cygwin for, I thought it about time I learnt to use Darwin.

So far I have found no Home directory, though I believe this is the Users/username directory. The .bashrc file doesn’t seem to work but I think the .profile is working. However on Cygwin the commands are slightly different:
alias ls=' ls --color' on Cygwin becomes alias ls="ls -G"
 in Darwin.

I still have to see if I can make to work, and then move onto CVS. To complicate matters I also need to use SSH… hopefully I can transfer my cygwin created key for this.

It will be a painfully slow exercise.

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2 Responses to Cygwin versus Darwin

  1. Blair Millen says:
    29/11/2005 at 10:39 am

    Hi Rich,

    I’ve been thinking about getting myself a Mac for a while and have put it off mainly because, like yourself, it would probably not get used much.

    Of course the aim would be use it for testing purposes, which I assume is your reason, however, there’s a niggling concern that I’d end up loving the Mac so much that I’d use it more than my PC and end up wanting to buy a really expensive G5 or something!

    So, how do you currently have your Mac Mini set up? Do you use a KVM Switch and use the same monitor? Any other tips you can pass on?

    Cheers!

  2. Rich says:
    29/11/2005 at 11:08 am

    Hey Blair,
    Yes I use a KVM switch, but I opted for a small version. Just remember when purchasing one that the Mac uses USB for keyboard/mouse. Also the keyboard configuration is slightly different which caused me a headache or two to begin with.

    No real tips at the moment, it is fun to play with but the learning curve for all its little idiosyncracies. It is certainly far easier than cygwin even though I am still gettoing to grips with it. Plus the usual ‘how much time can I really donate to it’.

    It isn’t asy to swap to OSX from Windows, as there are differences, but I managed to find out how to install things without to much problem.

    I have yet to install other browsers on it, I just have Safari and IE. Though I am considering Firefox and Opera.

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