[Pymeus]

Windows itself is usually less stable than Linux. You wouldn't want to host the main game on Windows, but it should be more than stable enough for coding and testing purposes. Note that most of these mud codebases will still require a Linux-like environment or else code modifications to your mud to make it work under whatever compiler you settle on.

That's possible and even common, but again requires that your machine have a development environment that can handle your codebase.

That's unfortunate. Most of the important tools in a unix environment are text-based, which I would have thought the screen reader would like. Oh well.

Cygwin isn't the only way to get a Linux-like environment in Windows, but it does seem to be the most popular one by far and it's the only one I've personally used. If Cygwin doesn't work for you, maybe "AndLinux" will. It was somewhat popular a few years ago but I've lost track of it since I don't use Windows much anymore. It may not be well-suited for you though; as I recall it was some sort of integrated desktop wherein Linux was just a program running inside Windows. I wouldn't expect it to be screen-reader friendly, but you never know.

Windows and unix use different end-of-line markers. You can usually move a Windows text file into unix with only minor issues that may not even be detectable in a screen reader. But Windows is not so kind with unix text files and will often cram the entire file into one line. However with a screen reader that may again not be particularly important.