Here’s the Deal
Slant is powered by a community that helps you make informed decisions. Tell us what you’re passionate about to get your personalized feed and help others.
When comparing MSYS2 vs Cygwin, the Slant community recommends Cygwin for most people. In the question“What are the best collections of Unix libraries for Windows?” Cygwin is ranked 2nd while MSYS2 is ranked 4th.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Common Questions
Other Questions
Pros
Pro Easy Install
Easily install most linux command line tools.
Pro Additional packages available via Cygwin Ports project
Pro Better default terminal
Cygwin's default terminal "Mintty" is far better than CMD.
Pro You can run graphical applications
It has X Server.
Cons
No cons yet!
Con Many incompatibilities
A lot of tools don't actually work with Cygwin, and documentation is often sparse, so for many use cases, it's worth the small bit of extra effort to just run a full virtual machine.