Software Alternatives & Reviews

Cygwin VS MSYS2

Compare Cygwin VS MSYS2 and see what are their differences

Cygwin logo Cygwin

Cygwin is a set of tools that provide Linux and POSIX functionality to Windows.

MSYS2 logo MSYS2

A Cygwin-derived software distro for Windows using Arch Linux's Pacman
  • Cygwin Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-27
  • MSYS2 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-05

Cygwin videos

Cygwin Review Part 1: Running Linux programs... on Windows?

More videos:

  • Review - Cygwin Review Part 2 - it didn't quite go to plan, again!
  • Review - What is Cygwin? | How does Cygwin work?

MSYS2 videos

QMK Firmware Tutorial - MSYS2, and Drivers (Part 1)

More videos:

  • Review - Instalando e Atualizando o MSYS2

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Cygwin and MSYS2)
SSH
81 81%
19% 19
Terminal Tools
59 59%
41% 41
Server Management
77 77%
23% 23
Tool
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Cygwin and MSYS2

Cygwin Reviews

10 Termux Alternatives
Cygwin is open-source software with a collection of GNU and provides all functions similar to the Linux shell environment on windows. This software also has the functionality of API manager that has premium packages to have complete control on your files and move them to other software based on your requirement. This app also has the functionality of editing different files...

MSYS2 Reviews

10 Termux Alternatives
MSYS2 is an advanced technology software with a user-friendly environment that provides libraries and tools for building, installing, and running a specific featured software on native 64bit windows. The software you generate on this platform would have a particular system of command called minty to have complete control over your profiles to run them smoothly. The primary...

Social recommendations and mentions

Cygwin might be a bit more popular than MSYS2. We know about 10 links to it since March 2021 and only 8 links to MSYS2. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Cygwin mentions (10)

  • Groovy 🎷 Cheat Sheet - 01 Say "Hello" from Groovy
    Alternatively, you can use sdkman. A great tool to install your Software Development Kit. The downside is that it only works on *nix systems. So for Widnows users, you will have to use WSL or Cygwin as the official page suggests. It is really simple to use sdkman. After a successful installation, just type those commands into your *nix shell:. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • How do you even get started programming in c++ on Windows?
    You could try Cygwin. I never leave home without it. Source: about 1 year ago
  • What exactly IS gitbash?
    It's launching MSYS2, which is in turn based on cygwin, which is a collection of common Linux utilities built for windows and an incomplete POSIX abstraction layer. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Kind of an obvious design flaw
    IME, not really? Git for Windows or MSYS2 are both pretty solid. I used Cygwin for years, but MSYS2 seems to integrate a bit more smoothly (plus MSYS uses pacman instead of Cygwin's fiddly gui for package management). Source: over 1 year ago
  • WSL - Ubuntu 22.04 LTS using a ton of memory?
    Try Cygwin or Msys2, they are not running virtual machines. For Bash and Neovim only you probably don't want to run a whole virtual machine. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

MSYS2 mentions (8)

  • Trying to find the real MinGW
    Hi, I have been learning C++ recently using Visual Studio and Replit and wanted to switch to using a compiler with the windows command prompt. When I search up how to install MinGW there are multiple tutorials of indian people and other people who use totally different links and download pages in each video and I'm not sure which one to trust. Is msys2.org the correct website or is sourceforge or a different... Source: 11 months ago
  • Getting “QT with MinGW support”?
    Apart from what other people already said, http://msys2.org/ is another easy-to-setup option. Source: over 1 year ago
  • I Hate Windows!
    Also FYI: there’s a project called MSYS2 which derives from Cygwin and seeks to provide a proper set of Unix tools on Windows, including split: https://packages.msys2.org/package/coreutils. Source: over 1 year ago
  • std::cout << "It's a pain";
    Still, it isn't a compiler. You also need to install the Visual Studio build tools, or GCC and/or Clang through MSYS2. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Installing MinGW W64 with FFMPEG on Windows and fixing the weird "file downloaded incorrectly" error.
    Download the latest msys2 installer from http://msys2.org/ and run it. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Cygwin and MSYS2, you can also consider the following products

MobaXterm - Enhanced terminal for Windows with X11 server, tabbed SSH client, network tools and much more

MinGW - MinGW ("Minimalistic GNU for Windows") is a port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and...

PuTTY - Popular free terminal application. Mostly used as an SSH client.

Termux - Terminal emulator and Linux environment for Android

PowerShell - Download WMF. Windows Management Framework contains the latest versions of PowerShell, DSC, WMI, and WinRM for older versions of Windows. PowerShell Module Browser. Search for PowerShell modules and cmdlets.

ConEmu - ConEmu-Maximus5 is a full-featured local terminal for Windows devs, admins and users. Get better console window with tabs, splits, Quake style, copy+paste, DosBox and PuTTY integration, and much more.