Run Linux Commands in Windows with Gnu on Windows

Its a thing of common knowledge that Linux has many powerful commands that put Windows command prompt to shame. Although Microsoft has come up with Powershell for Windows, but its still not in competition with Linux commands. If you want to make use of the powerful Linux commands in Windows, then you can use GoW (Gnu on Windows). It is a pack of hundreds of Linux commands that run inside Windows in the same manner as on a Linux machine.

You can download Gnu on Windows from its github page. The download is an installer package which installs all the Linux commands on your system. After the installation, you can right-click on any folder and select Command Prompt Here from the context-menu. In the command prompt window that opens up, you can give any of the supported Linux commands.

Run Linux Commands in Windows with Gnu on Windows

If you do not know which commands are supported by the GoW, then you can give the command gow –list to view a list of commands that you can use. In general, all the basic commands of Linux are supported. There are commands like ls, cp, mv, rmdir etc. to manage the files and folders. There are commands like mp5sum to calculate the MD5 hash of one or more files. There are also commands like psftp, pscp, putty which can be used to securely connect to FTP servers. You can even run BASH scripts on GoW.

Run Linux Commands in Windows with Gnu on Windows

GoW is a free utility for using the Linux commands in Windows. It can be used both by the experienced users who play with Linux commands everyday, as well as the newbies who want to learn basics of Linux commands inside the safe environment of Windows before trying out Linux for the first time.

You can download Gnu on Window (GoW) from http://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/.

4 comments

  1. Hi, happy to receive.
    But could you please give me some more hints.
    Do i have to have puTTy downloaded to my system.
    could you give me a kind of batch files for executing auto login
    i have downloaded and just click pline exe, a command prompt flashes and goes.
    please, i only want to monitor my router device which has an ip, gateway and i want to uto login to monitor the speed and other particulars periodically instead of going to the router login page and navigation.
    Expecting your kind reply

  2. Hi, interesting to learn that linux command could be used in windows platform.
    i want to monitor the status of the router for which i am given the ip, it accepts a script in batch the user id to execute, but prompt for password. i have downloaded the gow and know that it is working.
    But how to make a script that also accepts the password to run so that , i need not type the pw again and again. reading puttygen somewhere, but the instructions are lengthy and confusing.
    could i just include a script to access my router with admin pw that i created for login.
    Is it safe to use? i use ssh command to try . it always ask for pw

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