A simple explanation of what is MinGW

I'm an avid Python user and it seems that I require MinGW to be installed on my Windows machine to compile some libraries. I'm a little confused about MinGW and GCC. Here's my question (from a real dummy point of view):

So Python is language which both interpreted and compiled. There are Linux and Windows implementations of Python which one simply installs and used the binary to a execute his code. They come bundled with a bunch of built-in libraries that you can use. It's the same with Ruby from what I've read.

Now, I've done a tiny bit a of C and I know that one has a to compile it. It has its built-in libraries which seem to be called header files which you can use. Now, back in the school day's, C, was writing code in a vi-like IDE called Turbo-C and then hitting F9 to compile it. That's pretty much where my C education ends.

What is MinGW and what is GCC? I've been mainly working on Windows systems and have even recently begun using Cygwin. Aren't they the same?

A simple explanation hitting these areas would be helpful.

(My apologies if this post sounds silly/stupid. I thought I'd ask here. Ignoring these core bits never made anyone a better programmer.)

Thanks everyone.

MinGW is a complete GCC toolchain (including half a dozen frontends, such as C, C++, Ada, Go, and whatnot) for the Windows platform which compiles for and links to the Windows OS component C Runtime Library in msvcrt.dll. Rather it tries to be minimal (hence the name).

This means, unlike Cygwin, MinGW does not attempt to offer a complete POSIX layer on top of Windows, but on the other hand it does not require you to link with a special compatibility library.
It therefore also does not have any GPL-license implications for the programs you write (notable exception: profiling libraries, but you will not normally distribute those so that does not matter).

The newer MinGW-w64 comes with a roughly 99% complete Windows API binding (excluding ATL and such) including x64 support and experimental ARM implementations. You may occasionally find some exotic constant undefined, but for what 99% of the people use 99% of the time, it just works perfectly well.

You can also use the bigger part of what's in POSIX, as long as it is implemented in some form under Windows. The one major POSIX thing that does not work with MinGW is fork, simply because there is no such thing under Windows (Cygwin goes through a lot of pain to implement it).
There are a few other minor things, but all in all, most things kind of work anyway.

So, in a very very simplified sentence: MinGW(-w64) is a "no-frills compiler thingie" that lets you write native binary executables for Windows, not only in C and C++, but also other languages.

To compile C program you need a C implementation for your specific computer.

C implementations consist, basically, of a compiler (its preprocesser and headers) and a library (the ready-made executable code).

On a computer with Windows installed, the library that contains most ready-made executable code is not compatible with gcc compiler ... so to use this compiler in Windows you need a different library: that's where MinGW enters. MinGW provides, among other things, the library(ies) needed for making a C implementation together with gcc.

The Windows library and MSVC together make a different implementation.

MinGW is a suite of development tools that contains GCC (among others), and GCC is a C compiler within that suite.