CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxwindowscygwin
Ray
Ray

Reputation: 67

How to use cygwin

This is a probably a dumb question. I was previously a mac user that uses terminal for everything, now I'm new to windows and tried to use cygwin to get the terminal functionalities. But I can't seem to figure out what's wrong with it:

$ pwd
/home/rachel

$ ls 
[no output]

$ cd Desktop
-bash: cd: Desktop: No such file or directory

What's wrong with my cygwin and how could I change directories with it? (cd Desktop works on commandline powershell so the path should be fine). Or is there better linux environment simulator for windows? Thanks in advance!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 190

Answers (1)

Bodo
Bodo

Reputation: 9855

Cygwin doesn't use your Windows home directory as /home/rachel but creates its own directory structure somewhere and translates between UNIX style Cygwin paths and Windows paths. /home/rachel may be correspond to C:\cygwin\home\rachel or similar.

You can use

cygpath -w $(pwd)

to see the translation of the current directory.

To get to your Windows drive C:\ you can use

cd /cygdrive/c

If your Windows user name is rachel, your Windows Desktop is probably

/cygdrive/c/Users/rachel/Desktop

If ls -a "$HOME" doesn't show a .bashrc, then this file does not exist yet. Simply create it if you want to use it.

An alternative to Cygwin is MSYS2.

https://www.msys2.org/wiki/How-does-MSYS2-differ-from-Cygwin/

Upvotes: 1

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