Enable Unix/Linux Command in Windows — How?

Unix shell compatibility in Windows

An example of Linux commands

You are using Windows, and you want your terminal (Command Prompt) to be able to run Linux-like commands?

➡️ Use MSYS2 — a Software Distribution and Building Platform for Windows.

📖 According to the official page:

MSYS2 is a collection of tools and libraries providing you with an easy-to-use environment for building, installing and running native Windows software. It consists of a command line terminal called mintty, bash, version control systems like git and subversion, tools like tar and awk and even build systems like autotools, all based on a modified version of Cygwin. The main focus of MSYS2 is to provide a build environment for native Windows software and the Cygwin-using parts are kept at a minimum.

Let’s get started.

Installation

Refer to main guide or see below the detailed steps to install MSYS2.

Firstly, download the installer and run it. I will set everything as default. When the installation is completed, MSYS2 will start with UCRT64 environment.

MSYS2 start terminal

However, there is one more step you need to do so that your Command Prompt can actually “inherit” packages in MSYS2.

Right now, CMD has not recognized the commands yet.

Setting up environment variables

In order for Windows to globally recognize the commands, you will need to add the path to the folder that consists of these operable programs, i.e., C:\msys64\usr\bin.

Check what folder the command is stored in.

Under the search bar, find Edit the system environment variables -> Environment Variables -> System variables -> Path -> Edit -> New/Browse -> C:\msys64\usr\bin. Then, press OK to apply the changes.

Now, re-open the Command Prompt terminal and you should be able to use several Linux-like commands.

Additional Note

There might be some commands (e.g., zip/unzip) that haven’t been pre-installed in MSYS2. In order to use, you will have to install the package from MSYS2 terminal.

Go to MSYS2 terminal and install the packages:

pacman -S zip unzip

To update all current packages:

pacman -Syu

Now, zip works.

So, that’s all you need to do to enable Unix CLI tools (ls, grep, sed, awk, git, ssh, rsync) in a Windows-native way WITHOUT having to install Linux Subsystem (WSL).

In short: MSYS2 is essentially a package manager + build system for Windows, with Unix shell compatibility as a convenience layer on top.

Try it out!