Cygwin icon
Cygwin icon

Cygwin

Cygwin is a 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.

Cygwin terminals running on Windows 7

Cost / License

  • Free
  • Open Source

Platforms

  • Windows
-
No reviews
228likes
7comments
0news articles

Features

Suggest and vote on features
  1.  Command line interface
  2.  Linux on Windows
  3.  SSH
  4.  Compatibility Layer
  5.  POSIX-compatible
  6.  Runtime Environment
  7.  ANSI color support

 Tags

Cygwin News & Activities

Highlights All activities

Recent News

No news, maybe you know any news worth sharing?
Share a News Tip

Recent activities

  • Sneetsher, thejfex and Maria-Oliver liked Cygwin
  • MinC icon
    thingfish added Cygwin as alternative to MinC
  • asterryplace and brx12345 liked Cygwin
Show all activities

Comments and Reviews

   
 Post comment/review
Top Positive Comment
Olorin
1

Probably the most popular way to get Linux onto a Windows system. It's not quite the same as having Linux natively but it is probably one of the easiest ways to get much of its functionality.

ph soft
0

Stable, maintained, reliable. Used for many years.

Siphons
0

This tool is amazing. Unix command-line interface that can interact with Windows is the tip of the iceberg. Through Cygwin (and apt-cyg), I've installed Python, vim, an SSH server and other various Linux tools. Cygwin has access to most Windows commands such as shutdown (unlike WSL) and can launch cmd if it doesn't. It even allows me to copy files to external media even when normally restricted by the OS.

kclifford
0

I build mingw version of gcc and Cygwin provides an very robust environment for doing that.

Review by a new / low-activity user.
baconbits
0

Incredibly useful set of software for any developer. The quality of the ports have risen to a very high level in the last several years.

I'm a Linux developer who uses Windows as my desktop OS. I need to inter-operate with Linux webservers so I'm constantly switching back and forth between desktop and remote servers. Cygwin makes it very easy to work locally using the same set of tools on the servers.

It's particularly useful for working with and processing data files "the UNIX way" with the typical suite of UNIX programs like bash, grep, cut, sed, awk, perl, python, vim, emacs, imagemagick, scp, etc.

eddieparker
-1

Use with mintty (available off the install) and you've essentially got PuTTY + cygwin. Fantastic.

Elmernite
0

Great! Lets you practice on you Linux commands while in a windows environment. It can take a little getting used to due to some compatibility issues between Unix naming conventions and window's. But it still works great!

Featured in Lists

List by Faradeus with 71 apps, updated

A list with 809 apps by AmileyaRyver without a description.

List by AmileyaRyver with 809 apps, updated

A list with 46 apps by rabbit5 without a description.

List by rabbit5 with 46 apps, updated

What is Cygwin?

Cygwin is a 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.

Cygwin information

AlternativeTo Categories

OS & UtilitiesDevelopment

Popular alternatives

View all

Top Cygwin apps (extensions / mods etc)

View all

Our users have written 7 comments and reviews about Cygwin, and it has gotten 228 likes

Cygwin was added to AlternativeTo by Anon on and this page was last updated .