I've got and have used/use both. Like you am much more partial to Cygwin. Having said that, my ultimate preference is to have non-Cygwin dll based utilities where ever possible. The real problem is not on my machine, but as I mentioned, on my client's boxen---can't seem to convince them that it's ok to be free and live well, they are still caught in a lockstep with the robots from Redmond...sigh (some more)