The Cygwin program, which was originally created by Cygnus Solutions and was eventually developed by Cygnus Solutions and a number of other companies and developers, was first released in 1995. Cygwin is a Unix environment and command line interface that was designed to be used with the Microsoft Windows Operating System. Cygwin allows users to provide natural and seamless integration of Windows applications and other programs into the Unix environment.
The Cygwin program can be used to launch Windows applications straight from within the program and it can also be used to open Cygwin files within the Microsoft Windows Operating System. Cygwin was released with a GNU General Public license, it is an open source software application (which means that it can be edited, improved and modded by anyone with the know-how) that is available as a free download. Cygwin is available with many different plug-ins and add-ons, the software comes loaded with a huge number of features and functions and can be improved by the user or by downloading extra patches from the web.
