Author: Brent R. Matzelle
Gow (Gnu On Windows) is the lightweight alternative to Cygwin. It uses a convenient Windows installer that installs about 130 extremely useful open source UNIX applications compiled as native win32 binaries. It is designed to be as small as possible, about 10 MB, as opposed to Cygwin which can run well over 100 MB depending upon options.
Here are a couple quotes from happy Gow users:
"Gow is one of the few things that makes Windows bearable/usable"
"I use Gow constantly. It's awesome."
"I just wanted to let you know that the GOW Suite is simply great - it is far lighter than the Cygwin tool, and is extremely useful. "
Please submit feedback via the Gow issue tracker
Thank you for trying Gow!
Copyright (c) 2006 - 2014 Brent R. Matzelle