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Unix enviroment on Windows

When i start to make my first steps in learning Linux, i fell in love with terminal. I just install Ubuntu as my first distro, and i feel very comfy, because i have all i need. From the first days, i start to learn, how to install software with terminal, and do other small work, then i start to use nano as my primary editor, Midnight Commander as main file manager, and other tools.

Unix utilities is fame for their minimal code base, and powerful simplicity. The same time, Windows is really large in size, but don't have such wonderful utilities, so i need to find solution, when my main notebook is broke, but now i use Windows as primary OS without any problems.

So let's try to understand, how to feel comfy on every computer.

Git Bash

Installing Git for Windows, you have Linux-like terminal with simple Unix commands included. ls, cat, echo, etc... But, it doesn't have manuals, so you should know unix very well, or browse them online.

Go to git-scm.com, and download the latest release of Git as setup, or portable build. You can also use winget, an official package manager for Windows.

Also, you can associate Git to execute .sh files as native scripts.

Some interesting sh-scripts: glsr, rain, pipes, tree

If you need to read manuals, you can do this at man.cx, a large collection of manpages

Cygwin

Another, and more functional way - it's Cygwin. It gives you possability to install software from official repository. Also, you have own separated home directory, and can run Linux binaries. Someone is also develop tools with Cygwin for Linux under Windows, using GCC and Make. So this is really powerful tool, not just an emulator.

I recommend you to install this packages:

Further reading

Written: 05.07.2024
Last edit: 08.07.2024