Making Windows a developer platform, again
Microsoft has been rethinking its commitment to Windows for a while now, with Insider builds of the operating system showing a swing away from web-based user experiences and back to native code. That commitment got a boost at Build 2026 with a bundle of announcements that focused on tools and features that help developers take advantage of the platform. The most obvious is support for the standard core Unix utilities, in the shape of a Microsoft-maintained fork of the popular Rust-based uutils coreutils package, Coreutils for Windows. Coreutils for Windows installs as a single binary, making it easier to update and manage. And it is one of those tools that does exactly what it says on the tin, providing a Windows implementation of the commands you’re using in Linux virtual machines or in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Building on Windows Terminal with Coreutils Much of the Windows developer experience has moved back to the command line via Windows’ rearchitected terminal, underscor