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Use PuTTY as Cygwin terminal

Posted on in Development, How-Tos

Use PuTTY as Cygwin terminal

“Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows.” This means, you can use linux/unix commandline tools like ls, grep and find on your Windows system. However, the default installation of Cygwin uses Windows’ default commandline terminal cmd.exe, which is not really handy. Fortunately, there’s a solution to use PuTTY as Cygwin terminal.

  1. Download and install Cygwin. The setup will download all needed packages, so make sure you check what you need (my main reason to install Cygwin was to have a Git client on Windows)
  2. Download PuTTYcyg and extract the contents of the archive anywhere on you hard drive
  3. Start putty.exe, select Cygterm as connection type and enter - (dash) as command. Enter a session name (e.g. cygwin) in the text field below Saved Sessions and click on Save.
  4. Create a shortcut to putty.exe. Right click the shortcut, select Properties and append the following string to the target field: -load "cygwin". Of course you have to replace cygwin with the name of the session you saved in PuTTYcyg.
  5. Open the shortcut and you should directly get into your Cygwin shell
  • http://digitalchickenscratch.com codecraig

    Just curious, why is PuTTY a better alternative?

    • http://maff.ailoo.net/ Mathias

      I really don’t like the way the standard windows cmd-window behaves, especially on window sizing, copy&paste and so on. Therefore I use PuTTY ;)

  • http://digitalchickenscratch.com codecraig

    Just curious, why is PuTTY a better alternative?

    • http://maff.ailoo.net/ Mathias

      I really don’t like the way the standard windows cmd-window behaves, especially on window sizing, copy&paste and so on. Therefore I use PuTTY ;)

  • http://www.charliebigbananas.com paul

    Thanks for this post – it’s made my life that little bit better :)

    Putty – it makes windows usable.

  • http://www.charliebigbananas.com paul

    Thanks for this post – it’s made my life that little bit better :)

    Putty – it makes windows usable.

  • http://maff.ailoo.net/ Mathias

    You’re welcome :)

  • http://maff.ailoo.net/ Mathias

    You’re welcome :)

  • Andy

    Hi, you might want to try MinTTY, which is a new terminal for Cygwin that’s based on parts of PuTTY, with a few additional features. It can be downloaded from the project page at http://mintty.googlecode.com, or it can be installed through Cygwin’s setup.exe, where it appears under “Shells”.

  • Andy

    Hi, you might want to try MinTTY, which is a new terminal for Cygwin that’s based on parts of PuTTY, with a few additional features. It can be downloaded from the project page at http://mintty.googlecode.com, or it can be installed through Cygwin’s setup.exe, where it appears under “Shells”.

  • Luke

    I can’t thank you enough this has made my life so much easier. I am so used to using double-click to select and middle-click to paste on Linux that I have a really hard time using a terminal session on windows.

    I’ve always liked the way Putty supports this.

    Thank You!!!!!

  • Luke

    I can’t thank you enough this has made my life so much easier. I am so used to using double-click to select and middle-click to paste on Linux that I have a really hard time using a terminal session on windows.

    I’ve always liked the way Putty supports this.

    Thank You!!!!!

  • Montrealraaj

    Thanks for the tutorial.
    Very helpful….
    Regards
    Montrealraaj

  • Montrealraaj

    Thanks for the tutorial.
    Very helpful….
    Regards
    Montrealraaj

  • http://www.communicatesolutions.com Ron

    PuTTY was the terminal for my introduction to the command line so imagine how disappointed I was trying to use the cli on Windows. Finally satisfaction!

  • http://www.communicatesolutions.com Ron

    PuTTY was the terminal for my introduction to the command line so imagine how disappointed I was trying to use the cli on Windows. Finally satisfaction!