Cygwin alternate for windows?

Question

I would like to have some of the most frequent commands which I use in Linux environment in my windows box , I know there is program called Cygwin. But I don't want to use such a heavy one . All I want is a simple ported unix commands for windows.

Is there any Utilities like that ?

PS: I've created my own 'clear' command through clear.bat with 'cls' in it and I can't do it for all commands :)

Answer 1

There's a very similar question on here called "Is Cygwin the best UNIX environment for windows?". There they list a few alternatives:

• PowerShell
• UnixUtils
• Microsoft Windows Services for Unix

Out of those, perhaps UnixUtils might serve you best.

Answer 2

MSYS - http://www.mingw.org/wiki/msys

Quite usable, and as long as you have the "bin" directory of MSYS in %PATH%, you can use many of the unix commands from within cmd.exe.

You can even quickly switch to bash from within cmd.exe when you need to.

Answer 3

UnixUtils

• http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/

Answer 4

A few people have suggested UnixUtils, but it doesn't seem to have been updated in several years.

GnuWin32 seems to be under more active development. Its auto-updater, GetGnuWin32, is relatively clunky, but you should be able to deal with it if you're comfortable enough with the CLI to want Linux command-line tools in the first place.

Answer 5

Actually, if you install the windows version of git it comes with BASH, grep, and a bunch of other basic unix utils. It has to since git is built on those command-line tools. Easiest way to get a basic bash shell that I know of.

Answer 6

An excellent option is UWIN from David Korn at AT&T. It is free and it is regularly updated.

Answer 7

I have use both Cygwin and various iterations of Inerix/SFU/SUA as well as CMD + unxutils and putty, etc. It always feels like fighting the system.

I have really been won over by powershell (despite the name). I now just use powershell with some unixy aliases, a handful of scripts to emulate unixy behaviors and a few native windows ports like vim, infozip, ncftp, curl, wget, etc.

It kind of depends on what you are trying to do. If you want windows to actually be unix then nothing will feel quite right and it will be various flavors of frustrating. If you want to port software then there are lots of options with various pros and cons. If what you want is a powerful text-mode shell and scriping environment where you have a hope of replicating your automations onto servers or your buddies machines then take a hard look at powershell.