I've recently installed Cygwin for windows, and I want to install kde and other packages on it, how do I do so via the command line? I'm really confused. I have kde3 off mandrake9, can I use that, or will I have to download it? Where do I put the files?

You can't just run binary programs compiled for Linux under Cygwin. Cygwin is not an emulator, but a Unix environment running in MS-DOS, and all programs sould be recompiled for it.

You would have to recompile everything from KDE sources. Running X-windows in Cygwin can be very slow, even with a very fast graphics card, so I would suggest you forget all about running KDE in Cygwin.

Why do you want to run KDE under cygwin?

Because I'm a hopeless geek with more itchy keyboard-hitting and mouse-clicking fingers than common sense?

If 'getting KDE to run on Cygwin' is the objective, then toloban's got the right direction. But Cygwin can run WindowMaker and some other stuff easily. And if this is a 9x machine, ZipSlack will run a better Linux than Cygwin, since it's an actual Linux with a UMSDOS filesystem, whereas Cygwin's a sort of API. And then there's installing a full Linux on it's own partition. It all depends on what's the actual objective. If it is itchy fingers and the end result, time, and effort isn't an issue, might as well try to compile KDE for Windows. If it's to actually run KDE, ZipSlack or a fully native Linux would be a better route. If it's just to have a Cygwin GUI, WindowMaker or something would be better.