Frequently Asked Questions

Questions which haven't made it into the README yet, or which can be better answered here.

  1. Q. Why use WinZsh instead of zsh on Cygwin?

    A. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Cygwin is somewhat large and invasive (writes to the registry), but provides a nearly complete Linux emulation layer. WinZsh is a small (currently under 500 KB), portable self-contained executable, but only provides a shell. Cygwin doesn't always interact smoothly with native Windows applications, while WinZsh (being native) should. WinZsh may be faster. Cygwin provides up-to-date packages of zsh, while WinZsh is currently based on an old version of zsh. Cygwin has been much better tested, is more stable, and seems to be the current supported method for running zsh on Windows, while WinZsh wasn't actively maintained for several years.

  2. Q. What operating systems does WinZsh run on?

    A. Good question, please test and report back! Currently development and testing is on 32 bit Windows XP, Windows 2000 almost certainly works fine as well. Originally the code ran on Windows 95/98/ME and NT 4.0 and likely still does, however these obsolete platforms will not be actively supported going forward. Windows Vista and Windows 7 support is unknown, as I don't have those operating systems to test on. The code almost certainly does NOT work on 64 bit systems, however it could probably be made to do so by incorporating changes from tcsh.

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