Holger Vogt's XCircuit for Windows 95/98/NT

Warning! Attempts to emulate UNIX under Windows are not in accordance with the stated goals of Microsoft Corporation. Go for it.

XCircuit has been successfully compiled under Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP. This is a complicated task involving downloading open-source dll's for running UNIX and X11 APIs on top of Windows (sounds ugly, and probably is). There is a package called Cygwin B20.1 which is required if you want to compile UNIX/X11 programs under Windows. Instructions for finding, downloading, and installing it are included here. The average user, however, will just want to download the xcircuit executable and supporting files, a process which fortunately been made simple through quality packaging.

The main sticking point is the requirement of an X server. X servers are only available as commercial software (although there is a version of XFree86 out for Windows 2000; see below). This must be stressed, because it is important: Xcircuit for windows makes X11 calls, and so it will not work unless an X server is running on your machine!

Anyone who tries X servers which are not listed here are requested to report their results, so this page can be expanded to include as many X servers as possible. I have tried PC X-Vision, and found it works perfectly.

Many, many thanks to Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Vogt at Fraunhofer-Institut IMS in Duisburg, Germany (holger.vogt@uni-duisburg.de) for being the first to try this path (or at least the first to try it, be successful, tell me about it, and send me a working executable) and for providing all of the download files and the detailed instructions below. The current version has been streamlined. Text on this HTML page has been adapted from file Starting_xcircuit.txt in the distribution zip file.

Note the short list of bugs listed at the end. If you find any bug fixes, please send them on.

Modification History

Precompiled xcircuit for Windows (tested on Windows98):

Installation Instructions for Precompiled Version

(tested on Windows98---not on others)

Compilation Instructions for Compiling from Source

X-Servers:

Other Sources (included with xcircuit windows distribution):

PC peculiarities:

With a two button mouse, you may choose left-click for button1, shift-left-click for button 2 and right-click for button 3. See tutorial 13.12: "tapping on top" will not work as stated; creating a selection box with shift-button 1 is okay. This behavior is X-server dependent; some X-servers will either correctly deal with true three-button mice or be able to emulate the middle mouse button by the action of simultaneously pressing the left and right mouse buttons.

The Microimages MI/X 2.0 X server (http://www.microimages.com/mix/) has been declared unreliable for purposes of using with XCircuit. Since MI/X is not freeware, we have decided to warn users away from this program and to stick with the ones listed above. We have no plans to try to correct or circumvent the errors arising from the MI/X server.

Bugs remaining:

XCircuit using VNC

I have received reports from people successfully using VNC (the "Virtual Network Computing" software from AT&T) to run xcircuit and other UNIX programs under windows, and they report that it works very well and is robust. This requires that xcircuit is compiled and run on a UNIX box, and the whole GUI is transmitted to the Windows machine. This works much like an X server. The X servers listed above can be used in the same way, to run xcircuit remotely. However, VNC is reported to be quite fast. I don't have a speed comparison of VNC vs. various X servers.

VNC is available for free from AT&T Laboratories, Cambridge.

Thanks to Don Harby for calling my attention to the use of xcircuit with VNC.