Life Without Cygwin Would be Rough

That headline may be a little overkill, but I depend on Cygwin for so much and yet I take it for granted. At home, I do all of my web surfing, studying, experimenting, everything on Linux and find that I always have the tools I need for whatever I'm working away at. Linux distributions — always the perfect tools for every job. When I go off to my place of employment, that environment is a rude awakening. My development desktop is Windoze (gasp!), Windows 2000. Cygwin is the perfect tool that makes toiling in Windows tolerable.

Mind you, the majority of the software development that I do on a daily basis is platform agnostic, being Java, Python, etc. I could easily do my job on  Linux desktop. It's the corporation that prefers that I use Windoze for Word, Excel, Outlook, you know, the usual applications, and I admit that I haven't fought the system and begged for a good Linux desktop. That's because one of the first things I did when I started this job was to download Cygwin! If I didn't have Cygwin, then it would be a different story altogether, but so long as I can have that, I can get by quite happily.

And so on to my point — I would be miserable without it and would incessantly complain about my sorry state of affairs being stuck on a Windows platform. I know, the GNU coreutils are available for Windows, and a number of other great tools, too, but those don't compare with Cygwin in my opinion. With Cygwin, I have a full bash shell and my usual load of scripts, I have sshd and crond (both as Windows services - that still tickles my funny bone), I have a seemingly endless number of packages I can install if the urge strikes.

I don't understand why more people don't depend on Cygwin to get their job done. I just can't comprehend it. Anyway, one day this week someone was asking me about it and that made me think how much I depend on it and take it for granted, so I thought I'd just put in this little recommendation. If you've never tried it, give it a shot. It's a big application, depending on how many packages you choose to install, and the graphical (sort-of) installer takes some getting used to, and it's slow to download and install, but it's worth the time and effort. You won't be disappointed.