I have installed the rxvt shell, now I wonder how I am supposed to execute rxvt without having to start cygwin default shell first.
I have tried the instruction on the following site, but when I have made that .shortcut file rxvt will only execute briefly and then exit.
To sow more confusion :)
1) rxvt isn't a shell - it's a terminal emulator, specifically meant to emulate the DEC vt100 series physical terminal. The -e /bin/bash in the accepted answer is what kicks off your shell (bash in this case), passing bash --login to make it a login shell.
2) Besides rxvt you may want to try mintty. I find it more modern, and cleaner. It's a more native Windows style app, with Windows cut and paste rules. I like it better, YMMV. I have no Cygwin install in front of me to test this, but C:\cygwin\bin\mintty.exe -e /bin/bash --login should work
3) Also look at the chere command line app, which adds the registry entries to say 'start shell here' to your explorer windows. It allows you to say which terminal emulator to use.
Installing the rxvt package should have put a start menu entry for it into the Cygwin folder in All Programs.
(Btw, you might also want to try mintty, which has a more native UI than rxvt and which supports Unicode.)
The rxvt shortcut that works for me is
Target: C:\cygwin\bin\rxvt.exe -display :0 -fn "Lucida Console-14" -tn rxvt-cygwin-native -e /bin/bash --login
Start In: C:\cygwin\bin
Can you see if this works?
