

What is Cygwin?Ĭygwin is an open source project that has been around for a very long time. The goal of this article is to introduce you to a third option that does not have the disadvantages of the first two: the open source project Cygwin.

This is a very good alternative, but it costs money. You can then use putty, an awesome remote shell client for Windows, to open a remote console and work on your cloud server from the comfort of your own PC.

Sadly, for many PCs this option may be too resource intensive and result in a poor user experience.Īnother good option is to rent a cloud server and provision it with the Linux distribution of your choice. This is a great option if your have a PC with lots of RAM, because you can set up a decent VM for Linux and leave enough RAM for the Windows side to remain usable. The most obvious is to create a virtual machine using VirtualBox and install your favorite Linux distribution in it. Not the type of terminal window you associate with Windows, right? Unix on Windows: What Are Your Optionsįortunately, as a developer on a Windows machine, you have a few options to create a Unix friendly environment appropriate for open source work. There you can see I have three independent very Unixy-looking console sessions. The image above is a screenshot of my terminal, running on Windows 10 (click on it to see it in its actual dimensions). This project allows me to work on my open source projects on the PC, using the same tools I use on the Mac, or on a Linux PC. In this article I'm going to introduce you to the open source project that I use to bridge the gap between Windows and the Unix world. I mostly work on a Mac computer these days, but I own and regularly use a Windows PC as well. If you are looking for tutorials online on any open source related topic and happen to be on a Windows PC, you are going to have a lot of trouble in finding material that does not assume you are on a Linux or Mac system with access to Unix-based tools.

Microsoft Windows has long been considered a subpar platform for web development not based on a Microsoft technology, or in more general terms, for any kind of open source work.
