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Cygwin is a clever environment for Windows that emulates features of Unix.

My computer is setup to dual-boot, which let’s me load either Windows XP or Ubuntu Linux upon startup. Today though, while I was in Windows, I was itching to run some commands on the hard drive and first started with DOS commands. But it’s just not the same as running BASH commands (and also I have a lot less experience with Windows commands).

Enter Cygwin. With it I was up and running with a Linux shell in no time. It works by using POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface) calls. POSIX is a collection of standards, which were setup in order to allow for software compatibility between Unix variants. Max OS X and Windows OS’s fully comply with POSIX.

I just have the Cygwin shell running now, but the neat thing is that you can extend Cygwin to run most Linux open source software, including gnome, x windows, and even a Linux version of apache. I’m not sure why someone would want to setup a Linux server environment within Windows, but it’s a neat concept nonetheless.