This looks like an interesting project to keep an eye out for. On the topic of cygwin, I would also like to recommend mobaXterm, that I use instead of cygwin nowadays... It is an interesting choice in the alternatives we have. So, those of you that use cygwin, take a look at it here: http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/
If you are thinking about trying cygwin, I would recommend this instead, as the installation is relatively easier when compared to cygwin. (I have no affiliation to mobaxterm)
Another new indispensible tool for me is cmder, which leverages ConEmu, clink and mysysgit to provide a wonderful UX in the commandline for me - just brilliant. Here: http://bliker.github.io/cmder/
Memo to self: Spend the next 4 months learning powershell during lunch breaks!
The big problem with MobaTerm is that it includes really old versions of the standard unix utilities, and it's difficult to integrate with newer & missing utilities. This isn't a problem that's limited to MobaXTerm, but the way MobaXTerm does things makes it harder to fix.
Let's say you want to set up a standard dev setup. So you install MobaXTerm, vagrant, emacs, msysgit, and rsync. Each of these require SSH for full operation, so in the interest of making things easy, the installers bundle SSH. You now have up to 5 copies of SSH installed, all storing their private keys, cert stores and configuration in different places. What a mess. And some things aren't compatible with each other. IIRC, vagrant is built with cygwin, so you have to make sure you use a cygwin rsync with it, the msys rsync won't work.
To keep everything sane, start with the standard cygwin or msys installer, and install everything using that.
Does conemu include mingw-get? If so, that sounds like it might be a good solution. If not, I recommend avoiding it.
Or just reformat and install Linux. That's what I ended up doing. Putting up with poor HiDPI support in Linux was much more tolerable than the horrors of trying to use Unix utilities in Windows. And HiDPI support is improving quickly in Linux land....
I agree with your point on the very clumsy SSH tack-on take up with this approach.
About the older utilities, again, I completely agree. But, the way to create the mx3 bundles is easy. Actually, on the website/forums, several users there have been a few 3rd party utilities of the same. The format is transparent for anyone to create their own set of utilities on top of what mobs provides.
MobaXterm is sweet... If nothing else it's a game changer for putty users.
Yeah the ecosystem is kinda small for whatever reason. I tried setting up cyg-apt for it, and it almost worked. I guess if they made the regular cygwin package manager work rather than dropping a bunch of binaries into the same directory as the mobaxterm binary that would be a good start, but then maybe that would conflict with their business model.
Unfortunate that MobaXterm is not free (as in freedom) software, but looks VERY nice from the website. I'm very tempted, although I don't do much remote administration anymore.
If you are thinking about trying cygwin, I would recommend this instead, as the installation is relatively easier when compared to cygwin. (I have no affiliation to mobaxterm)
Another new indispensible tool for me is cmder, which leverages ConEmu, clink and mysysgit to provide a wonderful UX in the commandline for me - just brilliant. Here: http://bliker.github.io/cmder/
Memo to self: Spend the next 4 months learning powershell during lunch breaks!