Products · Product
Cygwin
Raised as a usability problem by 30 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2008–2023), in 28 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Adding tools requires re-downloading and running a separate installerUnreviewed
20082026- Must stop, close and re-run the installer each time a package is forgotten2021-12-23
- Package installer must be re-downloaded and run separately to add tools, with no in-terminal install2015-01-04
- Installer has always been lacking compared to package managers like RPM and APT2012-06-09
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 32 complaints
- Drive mounting modes caused lots of pain for users2023-08-29
- Too slow to use for most tasks, especially with threaded programs2022-02-05
- Must stop, close and re-run the installer each time a package is forgotten2021-12-23
- Becomes a pain to manage packages and can't update its own setup.exe2017-12-12
- Recursive directory traversal and find are very slow under Cygwin2017-12-12
- Installer took an hour and its many option pages are not user friendly2017-04-12
- Using Cygwin was the most painful experience for the commenter2017-03-03
- Shell startup and spawning processes are far slower on Windows than Linux2016-10-28
- Windows paths, drive mounts, line endings and cmd shell make UNIX tools awkward2016-05-24
- No command-line way to specify packages; GUI forgets previous choices, making steps hard to repeat2016-03-04
- Installer forces manually clicking many boxes in a clunky UI, hard to reproduce2016-03-04
- Cygwin install becomes buggy with ACL changes, unusable for some users2016-03-04
- Installer makes user pick a mirror and packages before they know what they need2015-10-14
- Everything is slow, making creating new screen windows a lengthy wait2015-07-14
- Cygwin is annoying and slow to use2015-06-21
- File operations on many files or network shares are very slow2015-06-03
- Package installer must be re-downloaded and run separately to add tools, with no in-terminal install2015-01-04
- Cygwin has poor default settings that users must change themselves2014-05-14
- Unless launched via a specific batch shortcut, the window can't be resized2013-11-29
- Installing is hard: documentation is poor, packages are hard to pick, and there is no uninstaller2013-11-26
- Occasional build scripts and gem compiles fail and are frustrating to get working2013-02-23
- Cygwin feels frustrating and lacking enough that the commenter switched to a Linux VM2013-02-06
- Bloated and non-intuitive, with difficulties from DLL version conflicts with bundled programs2012-10-01
- Emulated Unix operations like fork() are horribly slow, so configure scripts take far longer2012-09-14
- Cygwin commands like gcc give Access denied when run from cmd.exe2012-07-01
- Typing make and waiting around 30 seconds before it runs2012-07-01
- Installer has always been lacking compared to package managers like RPM and APT2012-06-09
- Symlinked files don't run from cmd.exe and X11 setup needs manual startup2012-02-16
- Packages are outdated and there is no simple way to fix them2011-10-08
- Package selection dialog is confusing and cannot be resized2010-01-21
- Having to convert between Windows and Unix paths is incredibly annoying2008-12-09
- Friction when doing anything outside the Cygwin environment2008-05-22