Linux Terminal Emulator for Vista

[StrangerInBeijing]

Probably a stupid question....

I installed my Vista Laptop (cause still need Windows for most work stuff) to dual boot between Vista and Ubuntu. (Installed Slackware on home pc for the heck of it).

Using the Linux distro's to practice and learn Linux commands, and it's going pretty well.

To get to practice, of course i need to reboot to Ubuntu, which take a few minutes back and forth.

I was wondering if there is some kind of Linux Terminal emulator for Vista, that one can use to quickly open (those stolen minutes at work, or lunch time) and just tap away linux commands and see if you get it right.

Did a google search, but as I'm still such a linux noob, i dont know what they are talking about.

Cheers!

[tr333]

It sounds like you are looking for Cygwin. This would allow you to run a Bash shell and practice the general linux commands.

[StrangerInBeijing]

Yay, exactly what I was hoping for.
Was worried if it will install and work on Vista,but seems to be fine
Thanks a lot!
Seems I cannot learn anything without writing it down or actually doing it, so really need this.

[wossname]

Do you have access to a regular linux box (maybe a server on your LAN?).

If so then you can use Putty to log into the server and use a real linux terminal on vista. Putty's just a desktop app available for windows.

[penagate]

Another option would be to virtualise Linux under Windows and open a terminal session to the virtual machine using an SSH client (such as OpenSSH for Windows, or PuTTY).

[StrangerInBeijing]

Thanks for all the advice guys. Too bad no extra machine for linux at work, as the others don't know or interested in learning linux.
Would have loved put Linux on the dev server. Going to do that Later on

Anyhow, I'm getting more and more used to using Ubuntu as my primary OS, so making some good progress.

Thanks for all the advice.

[tr333]

You could always just install VMWare Player and install linux inside a virtual machine. VMWare player by itself doesnt allow creating virtual machines, but a quick google search results in lots of methods (eg. http://www.easyvmx.com/).

[wossname]

Or buy a second hand PC (a small, slow, cheap one would be fine, Linux runs well on low-end hardware) and use that (this is what I normally do). I find virtuals awkward to use, I'm used to working on real Linux boxes that run independently of my desktop PC.

[TomGibbons]

Woss, try VirtualBox. It's free and super easy to use. It even has built in support for host networking as of version 2.1.

[wossname]

I've got a real server, there's no point.

[TomGibbons]

I have several, but that doesn't forgo the need to set up disposable installations for testing things, or to have a clean environment lying around for testing etc.