Also worth mentioning is the GnuWin32 project (http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/ http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/). It provides native Windows builds of many GNU

Also worth mentioning is the GnuWin32 project (http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/ http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/). It provides native Windows builds of many GNU utilities, including a few handy ones missing from the Git distribution like file and wget. If you're serious about using Vim on Windows, check out gvim (http://www.vim.org/download.php#pc http://www.vim.org/download.php#pc) which adds some nice Windows integration. I would also echo the author's point about avoiding Cygwin. It gives you the worst of both worlds: you can't access Windows facilities, and many Linux programs don't quite work right. By far a better solution is to use a native Windows shell (Powershell) together with native Windows builds of various GNU utilities (from a Git install, GnuWin32, MinGW, etc). Powershell gives you fluent access to a wide variety of Windows-specific API's, and you don't have to sacrifice the convenience of a Linux command line environment.