Or is this the wrong question?

Yes it's the wrong question. http://www.cygwin.com/

I had installed cygwin and I now have a cygwin termimal.I am getting flashbacks to X and UNIX when reading the docs but ideally I would like to use KDE, Eclipse etc. to work with a nice IDE like VS or SharpDevelop.Is this possible?

If I remember correctly, to use Eclipse IDE with cygwin compilers you need to do the following steps:1) Download and uncompress Eclipse somewhere easily accessable within cygwin (i.e. /usr/local/eclipse)2) Start eclipse from the cygwin command line using something like /usr/llocal/eclipse/eclipse3) The cygwin compilers should show up as an option under compatible toolchains.Also, if you have the MinGW compilers installed as part of the cygwin installation, I think Eclipse can find those as well. I also believe it might be able to find any Microsoft compilers, but that may require them to be part of your path environment variable.It has been a while since I set this up myself, so these directions may be incomplete.Good luck, it is doable without too much headache.

QuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnI had installed cygwin and I now have a cygwin termimal.I am getting flashbacks to X and UNIX when reading the docs but ideally I would like to use KDE, Eclipse etc. to work with a nice IDE like VS or SharpDevelop.Is this possible?The real question is: What is it fundamentally that drove you to want to use cygwin, what are you trying to accomplice at the end of the day?

Thanks, both.What I want is to use gcc linux 100% C++ compiler in Windows (I don't have time etc. to embark in linux install) but the C++ code should compile on both OSs (not everyone uses Windows).

I'd still go with MinGW GCC (unless you really--and I mean *REALLY*--need the POSIX compatibility emulation layer).http://mingw.org/ -- official, with a handy package manager, but 32-bithttp://mingw-w64.sf.net/ -- both 32-bit and 64-bithttp://sourceforge.net/projects/mingwbuilds/ -- MinGW-builds, "snapshots and releases builds of the MinGW compiler that use CRT & WinAPI from the mingw-w64 project."In particular, certain private distributions already contain pre-built Boost libs:STL's MinGW distribution ("distro") x64-native, contains GCC 4.8.1 and Boost 1.54.0:http://nuwen.net/mingw.htmlJosue Gomes' distro, "based on the MinGW Distro from Stephan T. Lavavej with the following modifications: MinGW sed removed, and Gnu GDB debugger and ming32-make included":http://www.josuegomes.com/mingw/On a side note, there's also been a development in getting LLVM (incl. Clang) running on Windows:http://blog.llvm.org/2013/09/a-path-for ... ds/Certain things aren't finished yet at the moment of writing (notably including IOStream), but the core language features like constexpr already work, and you can just use it via toolset selection in Visual Studio

I think I was posting 'how' I wanted to do something instead of 'what' and 'why' I wanted. (I'm a typical customer)The requirement is "How do install a user-friendly (aka no UNIX command line) IDE for gcc C++ compiler with the least amount of effort". This may involve 2 installations 1) virtual box 2) gcc and IDE??

Cuch, most of these will support MinGW -- pick your poison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... FC.2B.2B// Or, if your goal is just to check compilation with GCC or Clang, you can also consider something like http://www.koding.com/

I'm using following setup:1) eclipse installed to standard location like c:/eclipse. Then in help->install new software I installed c++ plugins2) install cygwin to c:/cygwin64. install all the c++ and mingw-c++ packages.3) add c:/cygwin64/bin to path variable in windows (right click on computer and choose properties->advanced system settings->env variables) 4) when you open new c++ project in eclipse you should now see 'MinGW GCC' in toolchains.If you want to use something like boost you have to first install it in cygwin (let's say to /usr/local/). Then open properties of your c++ project in eclipse, go to C/C++ Build->Settings->GCC C++ Compiler->Includes and add C:\cygwin64\usr\local\include to 'Include paths (-I)'. In MinGW C++ Linker-> Libraries you can add 'C:\cygwin64\usr\local\lib' to 'Library search path (-L)' and list of libraries you're using to 'Libraries (-l)' (e.g. boost_regex or QuantLib). I also added -static option to 'Miscellaneous' section.

QuoteOriginally posted by: outrunI would install a proper Linux virtual machine on your windows machine. Otherwise you'll have to deal with a cripple Linux-ish environment and you'll have endless little issues and very little option on getting access to all that Linux can offer. Having a Linux vm lifts all those limitations that will irritate you.VirtualBox allows you to run an entire operating system inside another operating system.Hello. Is installing/using Ubuntu say from within Windows as smooth as they explain in their documentation (I don't mean to be cynical) ???

QuoteOriginally posted by: edouardQuoteOriginally posted by: outrunI would install a proper Linux virtual machine on your windows machine. Otherwise you'll have to deal with a cripple Linux-ish environment and you'll have endless little issues and very little option on getting access to all that Linux can offer. Having a Linux vm lifts all those limitations that will irritate you.VirtualBox allows you to run an entire operating system inside another operating system.Hello. Is installing/using Ubuntu saying from within Windows as smooth as they explain in their documentation (I don't mean to be cynical) ???Yes.