Setting up Cygwin and Xming

You will need to install Cygwin and then Xming.

Installing Cygwin

Note: during 2009, the Cygwin release didn't work well under vista and win7, so we developed work-arounds described here: Old instructions for sorta-broken cygwin under vista during 2009

This install will take many hours, even if you have a fast internet connection. Dr. Freudenthal tends to let it run overnight. Do not suspend or power off mid-install as that you'll need to delete all files and start again.
Instructions

Download and run the cygwin installer from the cygwin homepage.
Generally accept defaults. Two screens require special attention:
- "choose a download site": I used ftp://ftp.gtlib.gatech.edu
- "select packages": click once to select "install" (it will take a few seconds to respond) on the root of the options tree to installeverything (this will take all afternoon even if you have a fast network connection).
Click next, agree to let it resolve any extra dependencies, and let it run to completion.

Installing and Configuring the Xming X Server

The Xming X server works nicely under win7, xp and vista.

It used to be much more stable than the cygwin X server. This was remarkable since they are compiled from the same source. Cygwin's server seems more stable in 2010 than in 2009, but Dr. F still uses Xming.

You will need both Xming and Xming-fonts. They can be downloaded from [1].

The default installation options are fine
You probably want to copy Xming into the Startup group since it's needed to run X-windows programs such as Xterm and emacs.

Once you start Xming (perhaps you want to put it in your startup group), you can obtain an x terminal by running the following under bash:

$ xterm -display localhost:0

However, we recommend that you to create a windows shortcut (right click on desktop, click on new, then shortcut) to:

C:\cygwin\bin\run.exe -p /usr/X11R6/bin xterm -display 127.0.0.1:0.0 -ls