I was just curious if there are any tools out there that would allow me to practice shell scripting without dual booting my computer to half windows and half UNIX. I've heard of Cygwin but is that truly UNIX ?
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4 Answers
Install Cygwin or install a Linux system under a virtual machine with emulators like VirtualBox.
Cygwin is not completely UNIX but it would be enough with not-too-system related scripting. There are differences though compared to a true UNIX system e.g. process managing wouldn't really work well. /proc too I think doesn't work as expected.
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Amber Roxanna
So you're saying that in order to get the complete UNIX experience, a VirtualBox environment triumphs over Cygwin ?
konsolebox
@AmberRoxanna It certainly does as Cygwin could only try to imitate as much as it could under Windows which has a different concept over unices.
Cygwin is okay, but keep in mind that if you want to learn about UNIX, Cygwin won't help with learning about the Linux filesystem, which is important.
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You could also have a look at How to develop in Linux-Like Shell (bash) on Windows?, maybe there are some helpful answers.
Personally, I think a Linux VM is your best option. Cygwin is a UNIX-like environment on top of Windows, it's not a UNIX emulator.
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I generally install git with Windows installer. Not only it comes with bash (look for "git bash" in Start menu), it also comes with git (duh) and ssh.
Obviously that's not "truly unix", for that install Virtualbox and in it FreeBSD or some other *BSD (they are officially "unix", unlike Linux which is "just" unix-like).
