Cygwin + Avira = Nogo
I have been using Microsoft Windows as my primary operating system since Windows 95, but I have always prefered the NT line for its superior stability and security (if configured right). I always use a normal user account for my daily work (not even a Power User account) and the Administrator account for installing software or changing the computer configuration. Plus I do not opene every attachment I get in all those virus mails 
This way I have been virus free for about 10 years.
But I thought it could be a nice idea to install an AntiVirus program for increased safety. I decided to use Avira, simply because it has a free version for home users and I didn't hear anything bad about it. After some time I even decided to buy the premium edition that has some additional features, and I thought that I was happy.
Then I found out that my notebook seemed to have a hardware defect. When I tried to build a large "make" based project within Cygwin, the korn shell would stall after some minutes and I could not kill it any more. First I suspected bad memory, so I ran some memory tests - no result. So I was thinking that the CPU could have suffered to much and could be broken. I started to look around for a new notebook, although I really didn't want to buy a new one, as my old one was still good enough for me (if it worked).
After a week, I thought that maybe the crashes of the shell could be a software problem. So I uninstalled some applications. No change at all - unless I uninstalled the Avira AntiVirus package. Simply disabling the virus scanner did not make any change, but after I uninstalled the whole package, I could compile again! After some hours of successful compilation I searched google for "Cygwin Avira" - bingo, there are some well-known problems.
Conclusion: If you want to use Cygwin, don't even install Avira, or you might suffer.
This way I have been virus free for about 10 years.But I thought it could be a nice idea to install an AntiVirus program for increased safety. I decided to use Avira, simply because it has a free version for home users and I didn't hear anything bad about it. After some time I even decided to buy the premium edition that has some additional features, and I thought that I was happy.
Then I found out that my notebook seemed to have a hardware defect. When I tried to build a large "make" based project within Cygwin, the korn shell would stall after some minutes and I could not kill it any more. First I suspected bad memory, so I ran some memory tests - no result. So I was thinking that the CPU could have suffered to much and could be broken. I started to look around for a new notebook, although I really didn't want to buy a new one, as my old one was still good enough for me (if it worked).
After a week, I thought that maybe the crashes of the shell could be a software problem. So I uninstalled some applications. No change at all - unless I uninstalled the Avira AntiVirus package. Simply disabling the virus scanner did not make any change, but after I uninstalled the whole package, I could compile again! After some hours of successful compilation I searched google for "Cygwin Avira" - bingo, there are some well-known problems.
Conclusion: If you want to use Cygwin, don't even install Avira, or you might suffer.
