Cygwin is a project that adds Unix style terminal to Windows. It includes hundreds of Unix commandline utilities built and packaged to function natively on Windows. It includes more functionality than Git Bash (included with Git for Windows) and is open-source (unlike MobaXterm). If you are currently using Git Bash on Windows, you may want to move to Cygwin if you would like Nano Editor, wget, and GNU Make.
Download the current installation utility from the Cygwin site.
I suggest the 64-bit version, setup-x86_64.exe.
Once the file downloads, move it to a sensible permanent location as the utility is used to update and make changes to your install.
For example, move it to C:\cygwin64 (by default Cygwin uses C:\cygwin64 as its root directory).
Double click the setup-x86_64.exe to use the graphical installer.
- choose Download Source: "install from Internet"
- Select Root Install Directory: the folder selected in this step with become your fake Unix style root directory
/. The default isC:\cygwin64, which should work for most users. Do not change it to an existing system directory! All Cygwin files will be located in this root, so you will risk over writing existing files or causing incompatibilities. - Select Local Package Directory: this folder will be for package downloads. I usually change it to a new directory in the same location as
setup-x86_64.exe. - Internet connection: use default unless you have a proxy.
- Download Site: choose a mirror to download from. Any should work.
- Select Packages: This is where you can add additional packages beyond the default install.
To update or install new packages, run setup-x86_64.exe again.
Installation and choosing packages can be simplified by using the command line.
Open Windows cmd command prompt in the directory containing setup-x86_64.exe.
Enter the command:
setup-x86_64.exe -q -P git,make,wget,openssh,openssl,ninvaders,sl,fortune-mod,ctris
The -P option allows you to list the extra packages you would like installed.
Get the package names from the full package list and seporate each with a comma.
Check the installer's full list of CLI options to customize the command.
First, your / root directory is C:\cygwin64.
Cygwin creates a home directory inside this root.
This means that cd ~ then pwd will read /home/username, but it is not your Windows user directory.
Instead it is C:\cygwin64\home\username, your user directory in Cygwin's root.
To access your normal Windows file system use /cygdrive/.
For example cd /cygdrive/c will bring you to C:\.
Thus, your normal Windows user directory will be at cd /cygdrive/c/Users/username.