Cygwin (32-bit)

Cygwin is a collection of tools which provide a Linux look and feel environment for Windows. Cygwin is a DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API layer providing substantial Linux API functionality. The Cygwin DLL currently works with all recent, commercially released x86 32 bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. Download Cygwin for Windows PC Now!

The Cygwin distribution contains thousands of packages from the Open Source world including most GNU tools, many BSD tools, an X server, and a full set of X applications. If you're a developer you will find tools, headers, and libraries allowing to write Windows console or GUI applications that make use of significant parts of the POSIX API. The software allows easy porting of many Unix programs without the need for extensive changes to the source code. This includes configuring and building most of the available GNU or BSD software, including the packages included with the app distribution themselves. They can be used from one of the provided Unix shells like bash, tcsh, or zsh.

The app can be expected to run on all modern, released versions of Windows. State January 2016 this includes Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and all later versions of Windows up to Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. The 32-bit version of the app also runs in the WOW64 32 bit environment on released 64-bit versions of Windows, the 64-bit version of course only on 64 bit Windows. Keep in mind that the tool can only do as much as the underlying OS supports. Because of this, the program will behave differently, and exhibit different limitations, on the various versions of Windows.

Corinna Vinschen is the current project lead. Corinna is a senior Red Hat engineer. Corinna is responsible for the app library and maintains a couple of packages, for instance, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, and a lot more. Yaakov Selkowitz is another Red Hat engineer working on the Cygwin project. He's the guy behind the current build and packaging system and maintains by far the most packages in the Cygwin distribution. Jon Turney is the developer and maintainer of the app X server and a couple of related packages.

Many thanks to everyone using the tools for their many contributions in the form of advice, bug reports, and code fixes. Keep them coming!