Cygwin Alternatives
Cygwin is described as 'Unix-like environment and command-line interface for Microsoft Windows. Cygwin provides native integration of Windows-based applications, data, and other system resources with applications, software tools, and data of the Unix-like environment' and is a very popular app in the os & utilities category. There are more than 25 alternatives to Cygwin for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD and Android apps. The best Cygwin alternative is Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Cygwin are MSYS2, MinGW, WindTerm and BusyBox.
Alternatives list
sakura is a terminal emulator based on GTK and VTE. It's a terminal emulator with few dependencies, so you don't need a full GNOME desktop installed to have a decent terminal emulator. Current terminal emulators based on VTE are gnome-terminal, XFCE Terminal, TermIt and...

Comments about Sakura as an Alternative to Cygwin


- Sakura is Free and Open Source
Here are some ports of common GNU utilities to native Win32. In this context, native means the executables do only depend on the Microsoft C-runtime (msvcrt.dll) and not an emulation layer like that provided by Cygwin tools.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Platforms
- Windows
PentestBox is an Opensource PreConfigured Portable Penetration Testing Environment for the Windows Operating System that allows users to use it without any virtual machine. It has got maximum of Kali Linux tools in it. And it requires very less space.
Cost / License
- Free
- Proprietary
Platforms
- Windows


Create GUIs for command line commands. Then drag files in to get their paths. And click buttons to choose switches.
Cost / License
- Free
- Proprietary
Platforms
- Windows


DJGPP (DJ's GNU Programming Platform) is a development suite for 386+ IBM PC compatibles which supports DOS-enabled operating systems. It is guided by DJ Delorie, who began the project in 1989. It is a port of the popular GCC compiler, as well as mostly GNU utilities such as...

TDM-GCC is a compiler suite for Windows.
It combines the most recent stable release of the GCC toolset, a few patches for Windows-friendliness, and the free and open-source MinGW or MinGW-w64 runtime APIs to create an open-source alternative to Microsoft's compiler and platf.
SpeedLinux is a customized coLinux. coLinux is not a VM but it can be used in the same way. Installation of Speedlinux results in a complete LINUX System with X server running side on side with Windows on a single PC.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Platforms
- Windows

Hamilton C shell™ is a complete Unix shell environment for Windows, including all the important utilities, mv, cp, rm, more, grep, fgrep, head, tail, diff, sed, cron, tar and so on. There’s even a real chown, a real su (super user) and a sudo alias to run a command elevated.


Hamilton C shell is the most popular commercial alternative to Cygwin.
- Hamilton C shell is Paid and Proprietary
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux


+3
RustyBox is a free-range, non-GMO fork of BusyBox written entirely in Rust. It includes all your favorite commands like ls, mount, and top, but without a single line of C code! Like BusyBox, rustybox weighs in at just under 1 megabyte and includes all the basic utilities you...
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Platforms
- Mac
- Linux




















Cygwin is "unix-on-windows", sakura is just a terminal emulator