For a long time the only way to launch Linux commands in Windows was with Cygwin. But Cygwin is rather bulky and can take a long time to download if you are on a slower Internet connection.
As I’ve mentioned before, I love Linux for its stability and reliability. So I was looking for a simpler way to execute Linux commands in Windows, and found it!
I present to you GNU on Windows also known as GoW).
To quote GoW’s website:
Gow (Gnu On Windows) is the lightweight alternative to Cygwin. It uses a convenient NSIS installer that installs over 100 extremely useful open source UNIX applications compiled as native win32 binaries. It is designed to be as small as possible, about 18 MB, as opposed to Cygwin which can run well over 100 MB depending upon options.
After installing it, all I had to do is add it to the PATH variable in Windows.
After that, all my favorite Linux commands became available in Windows, and the whole thing didn’t take much time to download. Thank you, the developers of GoW)! You’ve made my life as a programmer using multiple operating systems much easier.
I hope the information in this short article was of use to you. Thank you very much for your time, dear reader! The original is published on my blog.
