Of all the configuration files, .bashrc is the one that will most affect the command line environment. The .bashrc file controls the configuration options for the bash shell, and for the most part it is the same as it would be in linux. My full .bashrc is here.

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MySQL is a well known database, which you will need if you plan on setting up a locally hosted site for web development, or similar. MariaDB, a fork of the project which came into existence after Oracle purchased MySQL, is not yet available on Cygwin as of 2015 or on Cygwin Ports, but watch this space.

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Occasionally you may want to check your diskspace, and via cygwin, you can see all the drives mounted on your computer via the ‘df’ command line utility. A slightly nicer approach however is pydf, a python-based replacement.

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Cygwin Ports is a repository of binary and source packages that add more software to the base Cygwin installation. Included are a range of full desktop environments, such as Gnome, XFCE, etc. You can get more information directly from the projects’ website.

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When I first started using cygwin I didn’t really see much sense in having X windows, within MS Windows. I think that’s because for those of us who became familiar with Linux via desktop environments had limited exposure to the origins of X and some of the things it was intended to achieve - distributed GUI applications on client machines, run off a central server. So when you ssh into a computer, and they both have X servers, and you’re using the -X switch to enable port forwarding, you will get the GUI on your computer, while the program runs on the server.

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Cygwin doesn’t automatically update itself, and doesn’t provide a command line utility to do so. In order to get updates, and install or remove software, you need to run the installer again. Occasionally, you will also need to get an updated copy of the installer. Fortunately, all this can be automated:

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