Cygnix

Cygwin

Running Cygwin, including Cygwin/X, under Windows XP
Original author(s)	Cygnus Solutions
Developer(s)	Cygnus Solutions, Red Hat, others
Initial release	1995; 22 years ago (1995)
Stable release	2.7.0-1 / February 12, 2017; 2 months ago (2017-02-12)
Written in	C/C++
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Type	Compatibility layer, C standard library
License	GNU LGPLv3
Website	cygwin.com

Cygwin (/ˈsɪɡwɪn/ SIG-win) is a Unix-like environment and command-line interface for Microsoft Windows. Cygwin provides native integration of Windows-based applications, data, and other system resources with applications, software tools, and data of the Unix-like environment. Thus it is possible to launch Windows applications from the Cygwin environment, as well as to use Cygwin tools and applications within the Windows operating context.

Cygwin consists of two parts: a dynamic-link library (DLL) as an API compatibility layer in the form of a C standard library providing a substantial part of the POSIX API functionality, and an extensive collection of software tools and applications that provide a Unix-like look and feel.

Cygwin was originally developed by Cygnus Solutions, which was later acquired by Red Hat. It is free and open source software, released under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3. Today it is maintained by employees of Red Hat, NetApp and many other volunteers.

Cygwin consists of a library that implements the POSIX system call API in terms of Win32 system calls, a GNU development toolchain (including GCC and GDB) to allow software development, and running of a large number of application programs equivalent to those on Unix systems. Programmers have ported many Unix, GNU, BSD and Linux programs and packages to Cygwin, including the X Window System, K Desktop Environment 3, GNOME,Apache, and TeX. Cygwin permits installing inetd, syslogd, sshd, Apache, and other daemons as standard Windows services, allowing Microsoft Windows systems to emulate Unix and Linux servers.