In computing

Computing

Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...

, mintty is a free and open source

Free and open source software

Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...

 terminal emulator

Terminal emulator

A terminal emulator, terminal application, term, or tty for short, is a program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture....

 for Cygwin

Cygwin

Cygwin is a Unix-like environment and command-line interface for Microsoft Windows. Cygwin provides native integration of Windows-based applications, data, and other system resources with applications, software tools, and data of the Unix-like environment...

, the Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

-like environment for Windows. It features a native Windows user interface

User interface

The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...

 and does not require an X server. Its terminal emulation is aimed to be compatible with xterm

Xterm

In computing, xterm is the standard terminal emulator for the X Window System. A user can have many different invocations of xterm running at once on the same display, each of which provides independent input/output for the process running in it .xterm originated prior to the X Window System...

.

Mintty is based on the terminal emulation and Windows frontend parts of PuTTY

PuTTY

PuTTY is a free and open source terminal emulator application which can act as a client for the SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw TCP computing protocols and as a serial console client...

, but improves on them in a number of ways, particularly regarding xterm compatibility. It is written in C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

. The POSIX

POSIX

POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...

 API provided by Cygwin

Cygwin

Cygwin is a Unix-like environment and command-line interface for Microsoft Windows. Cygwin provides native integration of Windows-based applications, data, and other system resources with applications, software tools, and data of the Unix-like environment...

 is used to communicate with processes

Process (computing)

In computing, a process is an instance of a computer program that is being executed. It contains the program code and its current activity. Depending on the operating system , a process may be made up of multiple threads of execution that execute instructions concurrently.A computer program is a...

 running within mintty, while its user interface is implemented using the Windows API

Windows API

The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was formerly called the Win32 API; however, the name "Windows API" more accurately reflects its roots in 16-bit Windows and its support on...

. The program icon comes from KDE

KDE

KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...

's Konsole

Konsole

Konsole is a free terminal emulator which is part of KDE Software Compilation. Konsole was originally written by Lars Doelle.The KDE applications Konqueror, Krusader, Kate, Konversation, Dolphin and KDevelop use Konsole to provide embedded terminal functionality.- Features :* Tabbed terminals...

.

Advantages over Cygwin's default console include a more flexible user interface and closer adherence to Unix standards and conventions. Since it is not based on the standard Windows console

Win32 console

Win32 console is a text user interface implementation within the system of Windows API, which runs console applications. A Win32 console has a screen buffer and an input buffer, and is available both as a window or in text mode screen, with switching back and forth available via Alt-Enter...

, however, programs written specifically for that do not work correctly in mintty.

Originally the project's name was styled "MinTTY", following the example of PuTTY

PuTTY

PuTTY is a free and open source terminal emulator application which can act as a client for the SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw TCP computing protocols and as a serial console client...

, but it was later restyled to "mintty", which was felt to better suit the project's minimalist approach.

Mintty packages

Software package (installation)

In package management systems, which are commonly used with Linux-based operating systems, a package is a specific piece of software which the system can install and uninstall....

 are shipped with the Cygwin distribution and also with MSYS (a more minimal Unix environment based on Cygwin).