Re: what is the best Windows distribution?

[Sebastian Reitenbach]

Hi,
On Tuesday, April 19, 2011 10:35:29 am Zhang Weiwu, Beijing wrote:
> On 04/18/2011 04:20 PM, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> > Currently the only supported way is MinGW.
> 
> Thanks for the information. I come to realize MinGW+GnuStep setup
> doesn't have a packaging system or installer like CygWin, thus there are
> two choices to get applications.
> 
> 1. To get applications packaged in a Win32 installer. There is only
> gorm, systempreferences and calculator available, a rather barren land.
> 
> 2. To compile from source. This isn't trivial. For example, gnumail only
> offer source code in form of monotone checkout, so first problem is how
> to get monotone running. Many other application have source hosted on
> their site, and the way to get them may change. Besides it's not sure
> they will successfully be compiled, not even mentioning dependencies.
you may want to take a look here:
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/ports/x11/gnustep/
Take a look into the Makefiles of the softwares, you are interested in. Also 
take a look at the patches in the respective subdirectories.


> 
> -1. Switch to cygwin. This is a dead-end at the moment.
> 
> Both seems to be much poorer choices than FreeBSD (excluding -1).
> 
> There is an additional choice that is also non-trivial: To run a
> X-server on Windows and to install a virtual machine where FreeBSD
> inside, and install application in FreeBSD, port to X-server in Windows
> 2000.
> 
> This additional choice looks only as good as falling back to FreeBSD and
> tolerate 2 devices having no driver.
Or you may try OpenBSD instead ;)
The number of available libs/applications will grow in not too far future. I 
have a couple of new ports in the queue.

cheers,
Sebastian

> 
> Thanks for commenting so far!