What Is Cygwin?

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

The Cygwin DLL currently works with all recent, commercially released x86 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows, with the exception of Windows CE.

Note that the official support for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me will be discontinued with the next major version (1.7.0) of Cygwin.

What Isn't Cygwin?

Help, contact, web page, other info...

Installing and Updating Cygwin

The latest net releases of the Cygwin DLL are numbered 1.n.x, where "n" is currently "5" (e.g., 1.5.25). Any Cygwin program built from December 1998 onward should work correctly with 1.n.x DLLs.

The 1.n.x version numbering refers only to the Cygwin DLL. Individual packages like bash, gcc, less, etc. are released independently of the DLL. The setup.exe utility tracks the versions of all installed components and provides the mechanism for installing or updating everything available from this site for Cygwin.

The signature for setup.exe can be used to verify the validity of this binary using this public key.

Run setup.exe any time you want to update or install a Cygwin package.

Note that, when installing packages for the first time, setup.exe does not install every package. Only the minimal base packages from the Cygwin distribution are installed by default. Clicking on categories and packages in the setup.exe package installation screen will provide you with the ability to control what is installed or updated. Clicking on the "Default" field next to the "All" category will provide you with the opportunity to install every Cygwin package. Be advised that this will download and install hundreds of megabytes to your computer. The best plan is probably to click on individual categories and install either entire categories or packages from the categories themselves.

Once you've installed your desired subset of the Cygwin distribution, setup.exe will remember what you selected so rerunning the program will update your system with any new package releases.

News

New Cygwin DLL 1.5.25-15 release
Jun 14 2008, Corinna Vinschen (Co-Project Leader)

New Cygwin DLL 1.5.25-14 release
May 27 2008, Christopher Faylor (Co-Project Leader)

New Cygwin DLL 1.5.25-11 release
Mar 9 2008, Corinna Vinschen (Co-Project Leader)

New Cygwin DLL 1.5.25-7 release
Dec 17 2007, Corinna Vinschen (Co-Project Leader)

New Cygwin DLL 1.5.25-5 release
Dec 9 2007, Corinna Vinschen (Co-Project Leader)

New Cygwin DLL 1.5.24-2 release
Jan 31 2007, Corinna Vinschen (Co-Project Leader)

New Cygwin DLL 1.5.24-1 release
Jan 26 2007, Corinna Vinschen (Co-Project Leader)

New Cygwin DLL 1.5.23-2 release
Dec 20 2006, Corinna Vinschen (Co-Project Leader)

New Cygwin DLL 1.5.23-1 release
Dec 19 2006, Corinna Vinschen (Co-Project Leader)

New Cygwin DLL 1.5.22-1 release
Nov 14 2006, Corinna Vinschen (Co-Project Leader)

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Cygwin Software On Other Sites

SaVi 1.2.8
Jan 5 2006, Lloyd Wood

New home for Cygwin Ports
Aug 31 2005, Yaakov Selkowitz

Entropy RSA P2P network
Jun 27 2005, Juergen Buchmueller

XView libraries
Mar 3 2005, Isaac Henry

SaVi satellite constellation visualization
Feb 16 2005, Lloyd Wood

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