MSYS2
Ranked 11 of 27 compatibility layers by recommenders
Gives Windows a Unix-style shell, toolchain and pacman package manager for building native Windows software, though its many environments and versions confuse people.
Gives Windows a Unix-style shell, toolchain and pacman package manager for building native Windows software, though its many environments and versions confuse people.
24 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 63%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Pacman package manager for installing tools
“OneCore patched XP with MSYS2/MinGW/Cygwin with Bash, gnu tooling and the pacman package manager.”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux” “I do install as most things as possible with the MSYS2 package manager.”
Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “Notepad++ supply chain attack breakdown” “the work the MSYS2 team put into their layered environments mechanism”
Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “I Fixed Windows Native Development” - Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “Giving C a superpower: custom header file (safe_c.h)”
- Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux”
Builds native Windows software
“The nice and genius part of MSYS2 is that it is there to primarily encourage you to develop native Windows software”
Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “I Fixed Windows Native Development” “In the latter case you even still get (mostly complete) MSVC ABI-compatibility if you compile with clang.”
Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “I Fixed Windows Native Development” “Packaging on windows was only made possible by MSYS2”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “I hate packaging my software for Linux” Unix tools on Windows without a VM
“All msys2 does is give you a unified BSD experience and toolchain for compiling applications for any architecture and platform.”
Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “I Fixed Windows Native Development” “it is quite a user friendly to run native POSIX binaries on Windows without a linux VM”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux” “the linux ports (cygwin, msys2, git bash) are all great to have”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” Lightweight and easy to use
“Super lightweight and easy to use, highly recommend.”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux” “that download page is much smoother sailing”
Comment from 17 Feb 2026 in “I Fixed Windows Native Development” “for a better overall experience”
Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Make Tmux the OS”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Many environments and versions confuse
“It's annoying to wade through six different versions of the same package for different runtimes and word sizes.”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux” “MSYS2 is very confusing. When you pick "MSYS2", you are building exclusively for the MSYS2 target environment”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux” “now you have two (incompatible) versions of MSYS2 around”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “The Linux Kernel Looks to “Bite the Bullet” in Enabling Microsoft C Extensions” Crashes and AppContainer incompatibility
“If that setting is set to anything but off, Msys2 binaries will randomly crash with heap allocation errors”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux” “MSYS2 uses it to this day, and as a result you can't run any MSYS2 binaries in an AppContainer”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux” Cumbersome compared with WSL
“WSL, msys, what not, but it is cumbersome.”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” “MinGW/MSYS2 are flaming poop hurdles.”
Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “I Fixed Windows Native Development”
Other compatibility layers people recommend
The four most recommended other compatibility layers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proton by Valve | 451 | 189 | 70% | 13 | 2 yrs31 owners | Approved |
| Wine | 329 | 88 | 79% | 13 | 10 yrs11 owners | Approved |
| Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) | 159 | 101 | 61% | 12 | 3 yrs9 owners | — |
| WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) | 115 | 55 | 68% | 12 | — | Approved |
| MSYS2This page | 15 | 9 | 63% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
30 of the 32 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“for a better overall experience”
“Packaging on windows was only made possible by MSYS2”
“no bash/zsh/msys2 obscure differences”
“you install MSYS, which is a linux distro-ish compiled native for windows”
“a regular MSYS2 installation offers a lot more”
“why not just use MSYS2 or WSL?”
“Users might as well just use msys2.”
“Or MSYS2, to go even further.”
“WSL, msys, what not, but it is cumbersome.”
“the linux ports (cygwin, msys2, git bash) are all great to have”
“It's annoying to wade through six different versions of the same package for different runtimes and word sizes.”
“MSYS2 is very confusing. When you pick "MSYS2", you are building exclusively for the MSYS2 target environment”
“MSYS2 is cygwin with pacman cli.”
“MSYS2 uses it to this day, and as a result you can't run any MSYS2 binaries in an AppContainer”
“Super lightweight and easy to use, highly recommend.”
“If that setting is set to anything but off, Msys2 binaries will randomly crash with heap allocation errors”
“it is quite a user friendly to run native POSIX binaries on Windows without a linux VM”
“that download page is much smoother sailing”
“All msys2 does is give you a unified BSD experience and toolchain for compiling applications for any architecture and platform.”
“The nice and genius part of MSYS2 is that it is there to primarily encourage you to develop native Windows software”
“MinGW/MSYS2 are flaming poop hurdles.”
“a small price to pay, from my perspective, for staying in the same mental model”
“In the latter case you even still get (mostly complete) MSVC ABI-compatibility if you compile with clang.”
“there is actually zero need for MSYS at all for this”
“the work the MSYS2 team put into their layered environments mechanism”
“which should not be forced onto a user”
“I do install as most things as possible with the MSYS2 package manager.”
“OneCore patched XP with MSYS2/MinGW/Cygwin with Bash, gnu tooling and the pacman package manager.”
“Installing MSYS2 will also give you a package manager.”
“now you have two (incompatible) versions of MSYS2 around”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.