Category: cygwin

GNU/Linux userland tools for MS Windows

My standard tools on a Windows workstation

If I have to work on a Windows machine, these are the tools I usually install and use:

Free/Libre/Open Source

Free/Libre/Open Source software (“FLOSS”) with OSI certified Open Source license

Cross-platform:

  • Latest JDK
  • Intellij (Community Edition)
  • 7zip
  • Eclipse (Platform Runtime Binary + plugins required for my work)
  • Apache Tomcat
  • Apache Maven
  • Git (from git-scm.org)
  • Cygwin (with openssh, wget, nano)
  • Firefox (with Adblock, Secure Login, Firebug, Uppity)
  • Filezilla
  • LibreOffice
  • Pidgin
  • Gimp
  • Gvim
  • Wireshark
  • OpenVPN

Windows-only:

  • Notepad++
  • PdfCreator
  • Infrarecorder
  • CamStudio
  • Link Shell Extension

Closed source

Binaries currently available for download without license fees:

  • Adobe Reader
  • Sysinternals
  • Deskpins
  • MWSnap

Install cygwin and cygwinports packages using apt-cyg

I recently started using apt-cyg and like it a lot. It allows easy installation of packages from Cygwin and Cygwin ports repositories.

It is inspired by Debian’s apt but it does not support anything like a sources.list and it can actually only work against one repo (mirror) at a time. Well, I guess that’s bearable since there are really only two sources (main cygwin and cygwin ports). But I might try apt-cyg-multi which claims to have added the missing cross-repository functionality.

For now, I found it convenient to configure these bash aliases (use a suitable Cygwin mirror and Cygwin Ports mirror for your location):

alias cyg='apt-cyg -m http://mirrors.kernel.org/sources.redhat.com/cygwin/'
alias cyp='apt-cyg -m http://mirrors.kernel.org/sources.redhat.com/cygwinports/'

Update, June 2013: There is a promising-looking apt-cyg fork on github. I just started using it.

Save video stream as file using rtmpdump (even on Windows)

The rtmpdump tool can help you save video streams as local files.

It comes with most Linux distributions, e.g. on Ubuntu or Debian (with sudo):
sudo apt-get install rtmpdump

On Windows, the most convenient way is probably via Cygwin and Cygwin Ports:

  1. Install Cygwin
  2. Install Cygwin Ports
  3. On the package selection screen, select “rtmpdump”

Read the manual page and study the options:
man rtmpdump