Microsoft Coreutils for Windows
Ranked 4 of 5 command-line toolkits by recommenders
Microsoft's free, portable port of GNU coreutils for Windows, giving familiar Unix commands without Linux. Critics say it is incomplete and its commands clash with native cmd and PowerShell ones.
Microsoft's free, portable port of GNU coreutils for Windows, giving familiar Unix commands without Linux. Critics say it is incomplete and its commands clash with native cmd and PowerShell ones.
22 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 12
- approval share
- 45%
Recommended in 1 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 1 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Portable exe, no installation needed
“a portable 637KB .exe that doesn't require any installation, extraction or admin rights to run”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” “No .DLLs would be the primary reason.”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” Microsoft maintaining the tools
“having MS maintain them (assuming they continue to do so) is great news”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” “genuinely some good news coming from Microsoft”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” Familiar Unix tools on Windows
“if coreutils on windows helps simplify all the base toolchain, I am all in favour of it.”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” “I appreciate the effort to make things less painful for powerusers”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” “having grep/find/ls/ln/du/df/ps is still nice”
Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows Overview – Microsoft Learn”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Commands conflict with native shells
“It has conflicts all over the place, and requires being skilled across UNIX, Powershell and cmd”
Comment from 12 Jul 2026 in “Using PowerShell over SSH, Twenty Years Later” “Kind of broken apparently, due to conflicts with existing CMD and PowerShell commands.”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Microsoft to Ship Coreutils with Windows” “this conflicts with native shell utilities of the same name”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” - Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows”
Incomplete, missing commands
“0 of the 6 problems they listed in the 'Windows caveats' section are solved”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” “it is incomplete, quite the opposite of what is already out there.”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” “The one in that section that kills me is the lack of `uname`.”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” - Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows”
Little benefit over WSL
“There's almost no point to this, especially since they're already shipping a (strictly) limited subset”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” “it's just a lot of mental overhead for seemingly little advantage over WSL”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” Distrust of Microsoft's motives
“This smells like someone promotion to get the stuff shown at BUILD”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” “Never trust Microsoft to act in good faith.”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows”
Other command-line toolkits people recommend
The four most recommended other command-line toolkits, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GNU coreutils | 46 | 19 | 71% | 12 | — | Approved |
| uutils coreutils | 44 | 118 | 27% | 12 | — | — |
| BusyBox | 27 | 4 | 87% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Microsoft Coreutils for WindowsThis page | 10 | 12 | 45% | 1 | — | — |
| moreutils | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
26 of the 27 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It has conflicts all over the place, and requires being skilled across UNIX, Powershell and cmd”
“having grep/find/ls/ln/du/df/ps is still nice”
“I needed this 20 years ago already!”
“It's not seamless now is it if half the commands don't work.”
“it is incomplete, quite the opposite of what is already out there.”
“No need to install Linux on the machine at all.”
“which I found quite confusing”
“I didn't see less or a decent pager”
“The one in that section that kills me is the lack of `uname`.”
“it's just a lot of mental overhead for seemingly little advantage over WSL”
“Never trust Microsoft to act in good faith.”
“they failed to provide a port of Bash - so how exactly do they expect someone to run a bash script in Windows”
“a portable 637KB .exe that doesn't require any installation, extraction or admin rights to run”
“It's not coreutils. It's a rust slop.”
“this conflicts with native shell utilities of the same name”
“if coreutils on windows helps simplify all the base toolchain, I am all in favour of it.”
“No .DLLs would be the primary reason.”
“not listed as conflicting”
“0 of the 6 problems they listed in the 'Windows caveats' section are solved”
“This smells like someone promotion to get the stuff shown at BUILD”
“Isn't this just a restricted uutils fork? With most functionality culled for no good reason?”
“There's almost no point to this, especially since they're already shipping a (strictly) limited subset”
“Kind of broken apparently, due to conflicts with existing CMD and PowerShell commands.”
“I appreciate the effort to make things less painful for powerusers”
“having MS maintain them (assuming they continue to do so) is great news”
“genuinely some good news coming from Microsoft”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.