I took a job recently in a Windows ecosystem. I hadn't used Windows on a day to day basis in 4 or 5 years and my co-workers laughed behind my back as I stumbled

I took a job recently in a Windows ecosystem. I hadn't used Windows on a day to day basis in 4 or 5 years and my co-workers laughed behind my back as I stumbled around clumsily clicking buttons looking for the control panel. The laughter turned to open mouthed jealous amazement when I installed Cygwin and started doing everything they were at 5X speed including remotely on the servers. (Yes, firing up remote desktop and clicking file icons is slow..... go figure!) To be frank, Cygwin is the only reason I didn't walk out the door the first week. It's generally fantastic and has been a lifesaver. I get lots of guarded curious inquiries. Windows is getting better, but as of right now, its still pretty clumsy comparatively. Powershell looks interesting but I don't want to take the time learn all the intricacies. Anyway, I'm pretty sure it would be years before I could get around as fast as I do with Cygwin. And that assumes equivelent functionality... which I doubt at this point. Some of my Vim settings (colors etc) didn't show up correctly in Powershell for instance. So... that's why some people would use Unix shells in Windows.