Using Cygwin
Using the Cygwin X Windows Client
This document describes how to download and install a free X Windows client known as Cygwin for MSWindows machines.
Downloading and Installing Cygwin
Cygwin is a Linux-like environment that runs on Windows PCs. An X11 client is available within the Cygwin distribution, allowing you to run many X windows applications remotely from a Windows machine. The following steps cover downloading and installing the Cygwin software.
- Download the Cygwin setup.exe executable from www.cygwin.com
- Run the setup.exe executable. This will prompt you to select a download method. 'Install from Internet' usually works
well if you are currently connected to the internet.
- Select a mirror to download the packages.
- Set the 'Root Directory', 'Install For' and 'Default Text File Types'. Choose the defaults if you have no preference.
- In the 'Select Packages' dialog box, select 'xterm' under the 'X11' category. This will include all of the necessary dependencies for the
X11 client including the Cygwin base requirements. You might also check through the other options to see if there are any you would
like to download. If you select the minimum set of tools to support X11, the total installation will require less than 200 MB of disk space.
- Once you have selected all of the packages to download, select 'Next'.
- The last step will allow you to create Cygwin shortcuts on the start menu and desktop. If you choose to not create a shortcut, you can start Cygwin by running cygwin.bat in the Root Directory (C:\cygwin by default).
Cygwin also has an ssh client suitable for use with ARSC systems.