Installing Cygwin

What is Cygwin?

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts:

• A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.
• A collection of tools which provide Linux look and feel.

Why is it useful?

With Cygwin you can compile lots of Linux applications with little or no modification for use on your Windows computer.
Take advantage of Bash scripting and whole host of other useful Linux programs, like traceroute, whois, xwindow and hostx.

How can I get it?

This is the easy part. Go to the Cygwin website and download setup.exe.
The set-up process is straight forward, and there will be three decisions to make:

• Where you want your Linux root to be installed
• Which mirror you would like to use
• which packages to use and you are on your way.

You will now have successfully installed Cygwin.

If you have any stories about Cgywin, feel free to post comments about them.