On the Windows Start Menu, go to “Cygwin-X”, right-click on “X-win Server”, select “Open Field Location” (may be under “More”), and then drag its icon, while pressing “ALT” (so as to create a link), to the folder “C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup”. This way the X server icon will always be on the task bar ready to launch Cygwin applications. It is useful to have the X server configured to boot on start up. I find it very useful to configure the Windows task bar so that the icon for this Cygwin/X menu is always show in the task bar without the need to click on the “rotated >” symbol on the tas bar (right-click on the task bar, settings, notification area, “select which icons appear on the taskbar”). If you launch an application form the terminal, remember to put an ampersand “&” after the command, before you hit “RETURN”, to make sure the terminal window can still be used to launch other applications. From those terminals you can launch any graphical application (or you can also launch them from the said menu). Under “System tools” within that menu you will find the option to launch the Cygwin terminal (the same that you can laucnh directly from the Start menu, under “Cygwin64 terminal”) and also an xterminal. The other icon gives you, when you click on it, a menu to launch various programs that you have installed. One of these icons just tells you that the X-server is running. Two icons will appear in the notifications section of your task-bar (usually ont he bottom-right of your screen, where the notificatios about USB devices, etc. This will run an X-Windows server on the background. Perhaps more useful is the other exectuable, XWin Server.
More sophisticated Window Managers and Desktops are available as packages to be installed later if you want. The Cygwin-X menu within the Windows Start menu contains two executables: “User script” will launch a large windows within which you will have a running X-windows environment, with a basic Window manager and no desktop enviornment. Will create a link allowing access to the user’s Windows home directory from within the user’s home directory in Cygwin. running within the Cygwin terminal the commands It is possible to set up symbolic links to make key Windows directories easy to reach from within Cygwin, e.g. So as can be seen it is possible to access any directory from either Cygwin or the regular Windows Command Prompt. … is equivalent to the following in the Windows Command Prompt: The following table explains this better and gives further information: Executing with the Cygwin terminal … Also, note that Cygwin is all contained within a single folder in your Windows machine, though there is a directory called “/cydrive” within Cygwin that allows you to access the rest of the Windows system. “/” is the root directory, “~” is your home directory, etc. When navigating through files and directories, you must remember that the notations for paths used within Cygwin are as in Linux, i.e. you just need to run “Cygwin64 Terminal”. Running the Cygwin terminal and working with files and directories Once Cygwin and Cygwin/X have been installed, you will have two new folders in your Windows “Start” menu: “Cygwin” containin the executable “Cygwin64 Terminal” and “Cygwin-X” containing “User script” and “XWin Server”. However, the initial installation takes quite long as it is so you may want to leave those for later. The latter is essential as it contains Cygwin/X (no xinit, no graphical applications!) You may also want to include some of the packages you will want to install later on in the initial installation.
HOW TO INSTALL CYGWIN ON WINDOWS 10 UPDATE
The same Windows executable needs to be run every time you wish to add, remove, or update a package.įor the initial installation, include all the core packages and also the xinit package. You do it by running the script cygwin.exe found here.
First go to the main website and install cygwin.