I haven't tried the XFree port yet but I'd like to hear what experiences others have had.

It works. X11 forwarding works, so you can ssh into a *nix box and pull up GUI apps and display them on your Windows system. However, last time I tried it (which admittedly has been some months, so it may have improved) it was not as smooth as could be wanted, certainly not as smooth as a real *nix system. Among other things, installation was mildly a pain (more than for the console cygwin stuff), and rootless mode wasn't supported (so, you get one big cygwin/xfree window, with your X11 windows inside of it as if it were an MDI app). The wm that came with was twm, which is a tad bit on the minimalist side for my tastes. Presumably you could compile and install a different one. And stability left something to be desired -- I had X11 hang or crash much more frequently than under *nix. (I don't believe this was just the OS's instability coming through, as it seemed worse than that. The instability *may* have partly been what apps I was running, however, notably freeciv, the Windows port of which is not as well-maintained as could be wished.)

However, as noted, this was some months ago, and things may be much better now. I personally have getting a more up-to-date version on my todo list, and I don't think it would be a waste of your time to try out the latest and greatest. The version I tried months ago basically worked, so the current version may be quite good. Also, rootless mode support may have been checked in by the OS X people and may have found its way over into cygwin, though I'm guessing.

$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}
split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$ ;->();print$/
[download]

Rootless mode is in fact supported, though it requires some command line options which must be added to the startup script by hand. I believe that they do not fully encourage rootless mode yet (still in beta stage or something), but I've had no problems with it.

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If we didn't reinvent the wheel, we wouldn't have rollerblades.

The wm that came with was twm, which is a tad bit on the minimalist side for my tastes. Presumably you could compile and install a different one.

I believe you can do this more easily just by going back into the Setup program and choosing the desired wm. But it's been a while for me as well, so I could be misremembering.

I like console-only mode though.