I just install Gow.
https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow
In Microsoft Replaces Command Prompt with PowerShell in Latest Windows 10 Buildbmatzelle
gow
NSIS2011–2016
bmatzelle / gow
gow
Unix command line utilities installer for Windows.
20Distinct people
22Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
6.6KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Unix command line utilities installer for Windows.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year22 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2011-11-23 13:24:19 UTC to 2016-11-18 15:39:47 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Gow - The lightweight alternative to Cygwin
Download |
Home Page |
FAQ
Author: Brent R. Matzelle
ABOUT
Gow (Gnu On Windows) is the lightweight alternative to Cygwin. It uses a
convenient Windows installer that installs about 130 extremely useful
open source UNIX applications compiled as native win32 binaries. It is
designed to be as small as possible, about 10 MB, as opposed to Cygwin
which can run well over 100 MB depending upon options.
Here are a couple quotes from happy Gow users:
"Gow is one of the few things that makes Windows bearable/usable"
"I use Gow constantly. It's awesome."
"I just wanted to let you know that the GOW Suite is simply great - it is
far lighter than the Cygwin tool, and is extremely useful. "
FEATURES & BENEFITS
Ultra light: Small, light subset (about 10 MB) of very useful UNIX
binaries that do not have decent installers.
Shell window from any directory: Adds a Windows Explorer shell window
so that you can right-click on any directory and open a command
(cmd.exe) window from that directory.
Simple install/remove: Easy to install and remove, all files contained
in a single directory in a standard C:\Program Files path.
Included in PATH: All binaries are conveniently installed into the
Windows PATH so they are accessible from a command-line window.
Stable binaries: All commands are kept up to date but also as stable as
possible.
OTHER LINKS
Release Notes
Contributing
Executables list
Unix command reference
FEEDBACK
Please submit feedback via the
Gow issue tracker
Thank you for trying Gow!
Copyright (c) 2006 - 2014 Brent R. Matzelle
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
22 sourceson windows also check out this: https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow
git bash + gow + conemu makes windows not so bad.
In Google Cloud Shell – Free until end of 2016Cygwin is terrible but there are alternatives, such as:
https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow
Which work extremely well. I can go back and forth between Debian and windows without too much trouble. Many tools are cross platform.
In Inside the Creation of the Microsoft Surface BookOr why put output binaries to source control at all? Who is going to ever clone that? Github has "releases" feature for that which the project seems to be using too (https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/releases)
In Gow - A lightweight alternative to CygwinLooks like the maintainer provides the sources in the release section:
https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/releases
In Gow - A lightweight alternative to CygwinGow - A lightweight alternative to Cygwin
79 points · Open discussionYeah yeah. I opened this: https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/issues/164
Please comment with clarifications.
In Gow – The lightweight alternative to CygwinGow – The lightweight alternative to Cygwin
175 points · Open discussionAre the executables listed in https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/wiki/executables_list sufficient for use with this?
In A command-line murder mysteryFor an alternative to Cygwin, take a look at GoW[1] and ConEmu[2]
[1] https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/wiki
[2] https://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/
In Guide to Leaving your Macthe windows console sucks, but there are a couple of tools that keep you from throwing your workstation out of the window:
readline completion à la bash:
http://code.google.com/p/clink/
nice console emulator with tabs:
http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/
gnu tools on windows without cygwin:
https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/wiki
not perfect, but actually usable...
In My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get real work doneGow (Gnu On Windows) is the lightweight alternative to Cygwin
1 points · Open discussion> If you're on windows and don't feel like using the commandline
Just install gow ( https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow ) and you'll be able to run all of those examples as intended. The command line becomes very pleasant on Windows after that one little install. It's very lightweight and well designed.
In Uses for cURLI am the author of Gow.
> This is a junk submission. Where to start?
I've never submitted Gow to Hacker News but it does seem to pop up every once and a while and it gets the project a few hits.
This is a project I work on in my free time (and I get paid very well hourly so it's expensive to me) and if it weren't for programmers like me you wouldn't be able to do half the things you can do on your computer, so unless you've spent thousands of hours coding for free then please stop spreading the hate.
> This project hasn't shown activity in 10 months.
Please do your research. I just made a big release yesterday so the user that posted this wasn't just spamming HN.
https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/wiki/change_log
> Furthermore, the project is largely written in VBScript and batch files, which is insanity
I wrote that script 10 years ago an
Read the rest
d it works with every version of Windows from Windows 2000 on. I made Gow so I could use Unix utilities on all versions of Windows. If I wrote it in PowerShell then it would force all users to either use a new version of Windows or download the PowerShell installer for zero added benefit. The script just adds Gow\bin to the PATH. Gow certainly doesn't need PowerShell for that.
Gow - The lightweight alternative to Cygwin
40 points · Open discussionShowing the 15 most recent of 22 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.