PowerShell (including Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core) is a task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language built on the .NET Framework.

The best open source alternative to win-bash is PowerShell. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 25 alternatives to win-bash and many of them is open source so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting open source alternatives to win-bash are fish, GNU Bourne Again SHell, Zsh and MinGW.
PowerShell (including Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core) is a task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language built on the .NET Framework.

Fish is a user-friendly command line shell for UNIX-like operating systems such as Linux




Bash is the shell, or command language interpreter, that will appear in the GNU operating system. Bash is an sh-compatible shell that incorporates useful features from the Korn shell (ksh) and C shell (csh). It is intended to conform to the IEEE POSIX P1003.2/ISO 9945.

Zsh is a UNIX command interpreter (shell) which of the standard shells most resembles the Korn shell (ksh); its compatibility with the 1988 Korn shell has been gradually increasing. It includes enhancements of many types, notably in the command-line editor, options for...

MinGW ("Minimalistic GNU for Windows") is a port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and GNU Binutils. It provides a complete Open Source programming toolset which is suitable for the development of native MS-Windows (x86) applications, which do not depend on any...

This project has reached a minimum-viable product level of quality. While contributors dogfood it as their daily driver, it may be unstable for some commands. Future releases will work fill out missing features and improve stability.



Clink enhances your productivity in Microsoft Windows' "cmd.exe". If you're familiar with Bash then you will be familiar with the changes that clink brings to "cmd.exe" (it uses the same 'Readline' library that Bash uses). It is a small utility.

Elk is an experimental shell language that aims to seamlessly combine the syntax of a shell language like bash with the syntax of a general-purpose language like Python. Bash is great for executing programs and handling files, but can be quite limiting and tedious to use when it...

Xonsh is a Python-powered, cross-platform, Unix-gazing shell language and command prompt. The language is a superset of Python 3.4+ with additional shell primitives that you are used to from Bash and IPython. It works on all major systems including Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.


The KornShell language was designed and developed by David G. Korn at AT&T Bell Laboratories. It is an interactive command language that provides access to the UNIX system and to many other systems, on the many different computers and workstations on which it is implemented.