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Add Unix commands into Windows

When I want to feel like guru or I just need to use some Unix based utilities in Windows, I used to install http://www.cygwin.com/. It’s cool. But I recently found out that Windows has native support for Unix based applications.

I will demonstrate it on Windows 2008 R2.

You need to install feature Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications:

 

Install feature

Install feature

 

You need to download Unix utilities from

When you install it and you want to see what components it has, you can choose Custom install and see following components:

 

Unix SDK components

Unix SDK components

 

You need to think what to check, because Unix word is little bit different from Windows:

 

UNIX options

UNIX options

 

When it’s installing, it’s copying Unix based files into directory C:\Windows\SUA\. It also adds its path into PATH environmental variable. Installation requires reboot after it’s done. After rebooted you can see Unix based processes:

 

Unix based processes

Unix based processes

 

Finally you can use some very usefull utilities which Windows is missing (grep, tail, du, vi, …). You can find whole list in C:\Windows\SUA\docs\Releasenotes.html. Here is Start menu for Unix utilities:

Start menu

Start menu

So I hope this helps, because some tools are really missing in Windows.

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