diff --git a/pkgs/tools/compression/gzip/default.nix b/pkgs/tools/compression/gzip/default.nix
index c1e86b5d2f66..d5ff4d4da6cd 100644
--- a/pkgs/tools/compression/gzip/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/tools/compression/gzip/default.nix
@@ -1,17 +1,19 @@
-{ stdenv, fetchurl }:
+{ stdenv, fetchurl, less }:
 
 stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
-  name = "gzip-1.5";
+  name = "gzip-1.6";
 
   src = fetchurl {
     url = "mirror://gnu/gzip/${name}.tar.xz";
-    sha256 = "0wx1nqk709kx75cwp2axachnbxryp4gyl06qxn5nl95184w0mhls";
+    sha256 = "0ivqnbhiwd12q8hp3qw6rpsrpw2jg5y2mymk8cn22lsx90dfvprp";
   };
 
-  doCheck = true;
-
   patches = [ ./skip-some-tests.patch ];
 
+  buildInputs = [ less ]; # just for tests
+
+  doCheck = true;
+
   meta = {
     homepage = http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/;
     description = "Gzip, the GNU zip compression program";
diff --git a/pkgs/tools/compression/gzip/skip-some-tests.patch b/pkgs/tools/compression/gzip/skip-some-tests.patch
index ebcda684ef70..74043a3ab56d 100644
--- a/pkgs/tools/compression/gzip/skip-some-tests.patch
+++ b/pkgs/tools/compression/gzip/skip-some-tests.patch
@@ -1,20 +1,11 @@
-Skip tests requiring Perl and less (more).
-Also zgrep-signal skipping fails with weird Bad file number error on illumos.
+Skip test requiring more (not found in nixpkgs).
 --- gzip-1.5/tests/Makefile.in.orig	2013-02-23 15:15:08.017048868 +0000
 +++ gzip-1.5/tests/Makefile.in	2013-02-23 15:15:32.756197039 +0000
-@@ -1421,7 +1421,6 @@
-   trailing-nul				\
-   zdiff					\
-   zgrep-f				\
--  zgrep-signal				\
-   znew-k
- 
- EXTRA_DIST = \
-@@ -1441,8 +1440,6 @@
+@@ -1441,8 +1440,7 @@
    zfgrep	\
    zforce	\
    zgrep		\
--  zless		\
+   zless		\
 -  zmore		\
    znew