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Most academic researchers I know target just *nix, and rely on Cygwin to make their applications available on Windows. I have tried many of these projects and always found them too unstable for serious use when running on Cygwin.

Uwin looks like a promising alternative to Cygwin. I haven't tried it yet, but I found several comments that it is faster and more stable. However, I haven't seen any use of Uwin to support running *nix apps on Windows.

What are the social and/or technical reasons behind Uwin's lack of popularity?

user287424
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    Hard to use something one has never heard of, and well, Uwin is virtually unknown in the community. – Brian Knoblauch Oct 03 '12 at 20:21
  • I've just downloaded uwin from att research and I can't figure out how the hell to install it ... that might just be the reason no one uses it. –  Nov 07 '12 at 14:03
  • The [installation instructions](http://www2.research.att.com/~gsf/download/gen/BINARY.html) are not working for you? – Martijn Pieters Nov 07 '12 at 15:10
  • @Martijn - If an app needs intallation instructions in 2012, it fails the "Just Works" test- if the developers can't get the install right, what confidence can you have in the rest of it working? If Toyota made a car that drivers needed to RTFM before leaving the yard, how many would they sell? – mattnz Nov 07 '12 at 20:55
  • @mattnz: `This is (partially) meant as a joke` For many developers the "Just works" test is passed if they can use the software after running `$ ./configure ; make ; make install`. – Giorgio Mar 04 '13 at 15:11
  • @giorgio - Agree - config/make/make install is not instructions - that is how you install *nix software, and is "Just Works"..... Have you read those instructions... Most 'Users' need them translated from Geek to English. Personally, if the install instructions are written in Geek, I have to be really desperate to install a package - I am paid to write software, not spend hours following instructions, especially ones written in Geek. – mattnz Mar 04 '13 at 22:03
  • @mattnz: When a piece of software is well-written, unpacking and running those three commands is all there is to it: it is pretty standard. If it takes hours to read instructions on how to build then I would also give up unless I really need that software and there is no alternative. On the other hand, sometimes the advantage is that you get the software for free so spending 4 hours building it is much less than spending months developing it. Comparing to Toyota, if they gave away cars for free maybe there would be people willing to RTFM. – Giorgio Mar 05 '13 at 09:53
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    Forget about needing to read installation instructions, someone has to know how to `configure/make/make install` - the problem with Uwin's instructions is that they stink, the formatting is atrocious, and they have a laughable "Plan B" after the first utter mess of text. - The "Social and Technical obstacle to it's adoption is"... it looks like crap. – ocodo Mar 29 '13 at 08:05
  • Gotta agree here. If you have to know that the command line exists in order to use a piece of software, it's already failed. That's been true since 1984, and the *nix community's stubborn refusal to understand this most fundamental principle of usability is (IMHO) the single biggest factor holding them back from widespread adoption. – Mason Wheeler May 01 '13 at 15:53

2 Answers2

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According to http://slashdot.org/story/01/02/06/2030205/David-Korn-Tells-All (question 11), UWIN was not originally open source (though that appears to have changed in the 11 years since that interview was published). Not being open source would have been a significant barrier to widespread adoption, especially considering a functionally equivalent open source option (Cygwin) was available at the time.

Greg Hewgill
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  • In addition cygwin (and mingw) are the same gnu libs as Linux so most Linux stuff just builds – Martin Beckett Jun 07 '12 at 05:21
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    @MartinBeckett: just nit-picking here, but Linux and GNU are orthogonal. You can have either with or without the other. – tdammers Jun 07 '12 at 05:47
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    @tdammers - yes you can have gnu without linux, having linux without the gnu libs is a bit trickier. BUT the point is that if you wanted a random opensource tool on Windows it's very likely that the tool would have been written with gnu and so is more likely to build easily with cygwin/mingw rather than the limited windows posix API used by uwin. – Martin Beckett Jun 07 '12 at 14:48
  • @MartinBeckett: The build issue might be the reason for the continued preference for Cygwin. I'd like to see someone treat that theme in detail in a separate answer. – user287424 Jun 07 '12 at 16:54
  • Well, I'd hoped for a deeper reason as to why Uwin isn't more used *today*, but I guess this one has to take the points. – user287424 Jun 08 '12 at 16:50
  • @MartinBeckett: since we're nitpicking (or we were, in 2012): Android is Linux without the GNU libs. It works just fine ;-) – Joachim Sauer Mar 04 '13 at 15:29
  • It's 2016 now, but from what I can gather from the scattered documentation, UWIN doesn't seem to support 64 bits, which even in 2012 was probably already important – for reference, MinGW-w64 appeared on 2007. So it looks like UWIN not only got eclipsed at the beginning; it also fell behind. – hmijail Dec 30 '16 at 11:25
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First reason: UWIN was not originally open source; Second reason: Uwin executables requires a running service to be installed on the target OS, while cygwin uses a pure dynamic library.

user83155
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