Install Zim under Cygwin

If you have problems with the Windows port of Zim Desktop Wiki, you might wish to install it via Cygwin instead.

To install Zim under Cygwin, go get the Cygwin installer file setup-[x86|x86_64].exe if you haven't already. Make sure you get the 32-bit version not the 64-bit version, because Cygwin historically has fewer compiled packages in the 64-bit variant shared in their repositories. The 32-bit and 64-bit versions should both work. (If you've already installed Cygwin, you can skip ahead.)

Save your setup executable in a convenient folder where you will be downloading and saving a local package cache. %USERPROFILE%\Downloads\cygwin is a good place. Run it.

Select these packages to install:

• xinit -- installs all the parts of the XOrg server that you will need
• zim -- as of this writing it's at version 0.65
• mousepad -- you will probably want a text editor for the "Edit Source" command
• any other packages you might want, like graphviz, etc.

When it's done, you can start X from Cygwin-X → XWin Server in the Start Menu. Then you'll find the X menu icon in your system tray and you can use that to start Zim.

I've found this to be an effective workaround for a longtime problem I have with the clipboard breaking down if Zim is running and a VirtualBox virtual machine is running at the same time.

Installation size is about 0.5GB.

Running a Zim version later than what's in the Cygwin repository

1. Complete the steps listed above to be sure you get all the dependencies installed.
2. Download the source tarball for your preferred version of Zim and extract to where you normally store manually-installed applications.
3. At the Cygwin Bash prompt, ln --symbolic /cygdrive/c/WHERE-YOU-EXTRACTED/zim.py /usr/local/bin/zim.
4. Use the same XWin Server start menu item for Zim -- it should launch the global executable zim which is now your manually installed version.