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Slax replaces Cygwin

On my Windows machine, I have replaced Cygwin with Slax, running in VirtualBox.  Slax is a small but full-featured Linux distribution,  ideal for running a complete Linux development environment in Windows.  The default installation is aimed for normal desktop users.  It is possible to build your own Slax ISO by following the easy steps given here.   Slax has a great module system.  New application modules can be activated on the fly.  All development tools - compilers, editors and various language interpreters are available as Slax modules. 

Follow these steps to get Slax working in VirtualBox (assuming that you already have some experience installing Linux):

1. Create a new generic Linux Virtual Machine with 256MB RAM and an 8GB (less will do) dynamically expanding hard drive.
2. Boot from the default Slax ISO, and go to a shell.
3. Create a new partition (say /dev/hda1) using fdisk by using the entire HDD.  Make this partition bootable.
4. Format the partition to FAT32:   mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/hda1
5. Mount this partition to /mnt/hda1:  mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1
6. Copy the /boot and /slax folders from the CD to /mnt/hda1:  

           cp -R /mnt/hdc/boot /mnt/hda1
           cp -R /mnt/hdc/slax /mnt/hda1

7. Configure Slax to boot from the HDD:

           cd /mnt/hda1/boot
           ./bootinst.sh
           ./liloinst.sh

Optional:

8. Create some swap space on the HDD (here we make it 200MB):

          mkfileswap /mnt/hda1/swapfile 200
          mkswap /mnt/hda1/swapfile
     swapon /mnt/hda1/swapfile
9. Go to the modules page and download or activate the applications you need. (also see the note below)
10. Set the root password using passwd command. (the default root password is 'toor').
11. Create a new user for normal use with the adduser command.
12. If you need a lightweight window manager, you can configure to use FluxBox, instead of KDE.
     For this, open the file /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc in a text editor and change the last line to startfluxbox.
     (The default entry will be startkde)
13 Reboot the system. 

Note: The modules activated from the browser will be lost once you reboot the system.  If you download the modules to /mnt/hda1/slax/modules, they will be automatically activated on system start-up.  You can also use the activate and deactivate commands to dynamically add and remove applications from your system.