Cygwin: A Free Win32 Porting Layer for UNIX Applications

January 1, 2010

Geoffrey J. Noer

Cygwin is a full-featured Win32 porting layer for UNIX applications, compatible with all Win32 hosts (currently Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 95, and Windows 98). It was invented in 1995 by Cygnus Solutions as part of the answer to the question of how to port the GNU development tools to the Win32 host.