Microsoft announced today at its Build 2026 developer conference the release of Coreutils for Windows, bringing many commonly used Linux command-line utilities to Windows as native applications.
The project is based on the open-source uutils project, a cross-platform rewrite of the GNU coreutils in Rust, and is designed to make it easier for developers to switch between Linux, macOS, Windows, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) without changing workflows.
"Developers constantly move between platforms, but familiar commands don't work consistently, forcing workarounds, lost speed and context switching," announced Microsoft.
"To address this, we've built Coreutils for Windows from the uutils open-source project, a cross-platform reimplementation of GNU Coreutils in Rust. These are Linux-like command-line utilities that run natively on Windows."
According to Microsoft, the goal is to make existing commands and tools work across platforms so that scripts can be used on Windows without modification or other tools.
