Forgive me if this question was asked before, I'm unable to find an answer to it on this forum upon searching "windows unix".
I have Windows XP at home, and I want to practice Unix, I want to re-learn all Unix commands, Shell script programming and the Vi Editor.
I'm looking for a software that emulates Unix on Windows XP. Does anyone know of a quality program that allows one to practice Unix commands on Windows/ DOS ?
in fact, there are now many linux distributions (similar to knoppix) that boot from CD, including, but not limited to, knoppix, morphix and ubuntu (all debian based), mandriva live and dyne:bolic.
I installed Linux Fedora on a partitioned hard disk on an old laptop.
But, on another laptop I installed ViM for Windows XP to practice the Vi editor on Windows, lest I forget it again.
After installing ViM I installed Cygwin to practice Unix commands on Windows.
From Cygwin command, I'm also able to invoke the ViM editor, that works out great for me, as it simulates the Unix like environment after I exit the editor.
However, with Cygwin, I'm unable to list the existing files and folders that are on the C: drive of the Windows XP system.
When I list directories at / , Cygwin simply shows these directories and files:
bin cygdrive cygwin.bat cygwin.ico etc home lib proc tmp usr var
Then I tried $mount , it showed a mapping of
c: drive to /cygdrive/c - this means that every time I need to access a file on the c: drive I need to change directory to /cygdrive/c
Right now I don't know the limitations of Cygwin, it seems that DOS inserts CRLF in files but Unix only inserts LF for new lines, don't know if this will be problem, will have to wait and see.
I tried dos2unix and unix2dos in Linux and it worked.
Regarding CygWin, I think its a great program to practice basic Unix commands but I was looking for something that tightly integrates with the DOS command prompt.
By this I mean, if I start at c:\> of DOS I should be able to type ls and see a Unix like listing of directories. Or if I tab, it auto completes the rest of the file name.
My manager installed a program like that at my previous employer, but I should have made a note of what program he used.
He would type Unix commands on DOS as if it were a Unix machine.
I'll try out the other emulators and see how they work. So far I've only tried Cygwin and VIM for Windows.