The Best 23 Cygwin Alternatives

  • PowerShell icon

    PowerShell

    PowerShell (including Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core) is a task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language built on the .NET Framework.

    Free Open Source Mac OS X Windows Linux

  • MinGW icon

    MinGW

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

    Free Open Source Windows Linux BSD

  • BusyBox icon

    BusyBox

    BusyBox is a single binary that provides several stripped-down Unix tools in a single executable. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, FreeBSD and others.

    Free Open Source Mac OS X Linux Android BSD

  • gow icon

    gow

    Gow (Gnu On Windows) is the lightweight alternative to Cygwin. It uses a convenient Windows installer that installs about 130 extremely useful open source UNIX applications compiled as native win32 binaries.

    Free Open Source Windows

  • MSYS2 icon

    MSYS2

    MSYS2 is an independent rewrite of MSYS, based on modern Cygwin (POSIX compatibility layer) and MinGW-w64 with the aim of better interoperability with native Windows software.

    Free Open Source Windows

  • Termux icon

    Termux

    A terminal emulator and Unix environment bringing powerful terminal access to your Android-powered devices.

    Free Open Source Android Android Tablet zsh Bash

  • Babun icon

    Babun

    Would you like to use a linux-like console on a Windows host without a lot of fuzz? Try out babun! Babun features the following: Pre-configured Cygwin with a lot of addons Silent command-line installer, no admin rights...

    Free Open Source Windows Cygwin Git zsh

  • PyCmd icon

    PyCmd

    PyCmd is a smart command prompt extension for Windows cmd.exe; its purpose is to emulate a few power features of UNIX shells (decent Tab-completion, persistent history, etc.) while remaining 100% compatible with the cmd.exe syntax.

    Free Open Source Windows

  • MinGW-w64 icon

    MinGW-w64

    The project's goal is to deliver runtime, headers, and libs for developing 64 bit (x64), as well as 32 bit (x86), windows applications using gcc-4.4 or newer versions. It can be considered as a folk of MinGW(32)

    Free Open Source Windows Linux BSD

  • TCC/LE icon

    TCC/LE

    TCC/LE is a complete CMD replacement, and is compatible with your existing Windows command prompt and CMD batch files, while adding thousands of new features.

    Freemium Windows

  • Sakura icon

    Sakura

    sakura is a terminal emulator based on GTK and VTE. It's a terminal emulator with few dependencies, so you don't need a full GNOME desktop installed to have a...

    Free Open Source Linux BSD

  • TDM-GCC icon

    TDM-GCC

    TDM-GCC is a compiler suite for Windows. It combines the most recent stable release of the GCC toolset, a few patches for Windows-friendliness, and the free and...

    Free Windows

  • unxutils icon

    unxutils

    Here are some ports of common GNU utilities to native Win32. In this context, native means the executables do only depend on the Microsoft C-runtime (msvcrt.dll) and not...

    Free Open Source Windows

  • Cash icon

    Cash

    Cash is a cross-platform implementation of Unix shell commands written in pure ES6. Think Cygwin, except: - No native compiling - No ugly DLLs - Works in any...

    Free Open Source Mac OS X Windows Linux

  • mrxvt icon

    mrxvt

    Based on rxvt. Tabbed interface. Very lightweight. Few dependencies. Only drawback is poor unicode support (theres an SVN branch with working but slightly buggy support)

    Free Open Source Linux

  • speedLinux icon

    speedLinux

    SpeedLinux is a customized coLinux. coLinux is not a VM but it can be used in the same way. Installation of Speedlinux results in a complete LINUX System with X server...

    Free Open Source Windows

  • DJGPP icon

    DJGPP

    DJGPP (DJ's GNU Programming Platform) is a development suite for 386+ IBM PC compatibles which supports DOS-enabled operating systems. It is guided by DJ Delorie...

    Free Open Source Windows